


Ramblin' Blues

by ehefic



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canon Queer Character, F/F, fast burn, mechanic dina, no beta we die like men, runaway ellie, welcome to the randomdome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 52,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehefic/pseuds/ehefic
Summary: Ellie spent all winter in the truck on her own, eating up road, putting distance between her and the danger nipping at her heels. Then, in a dusty corner of New Mexico, fate turned her check engine light on and she met Dina.Dina wet her lips and looked away, then pinned Ellie with those eyes again.“Can… can I come with you?”
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 189
Kudos: 685





	1. Check Engine

The glass door shifted downward as she opened it, like it didn’t hang quite right in the frame. The little bell was almost unnecessary given how loud the door was when it banged shut. Ellie cast the whole apparatus a disapproving glance.

“Help ya with somethin’?”

Ellie shoved her hands in her pockets and approached the counter, dodging the cluster of dusty shelves of replacement parts. Behind the counter against the back wall, a grouchy old man with beady eyes glowered at her.

She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at her truck, the fading red paint visible through the window of the door. “Check engine light came on in my truck. Think you can look at it today?”

The guy sat up a little and scowled at the truck. He set his weathered newspaper flat on the counter and tapped his fingers on it.

Ellie drew to a stop a few feet from the counter, waiting uneasily for an answer.

The guy, Eugene according to the patch on his shirt, scraped his eyes over her next. “Might be we could. How you payin’?”

Ellie crossed her arms across her chest. “Cash.”

The guy rolled his eyes and scratched his cheek. “Gonna be at least a hundred fifty just to look.”

“Gonna take you a whole premium-rate hour just to check the light?”

Somehow, he managed to frown even harder. “Want me to make it two hundred?”

“You antagonizing another customer?”

Ellie turned in surprise. In the opposite corner a door had opened, camouflaged by the posters and signs covering the walls, and in the open doorway stood a young woman in coveralls. She had dark hair trying to pull free from a high ponytail, and there was dirt or grease smudged on one cheek. She smiled at the old guy, but her eyes jumped to Ellie, bright and curious.

“You finish up that Subaru?” the guy growled, settling back in his stool.

“Just about. Saw we had someone new come in and thought you could use some help playing nice with others.”

“It’s my fuckin’ shop, Dina,” he shot back at her. “I can handle the fuckin’ counter.”

The woman walked in and came up behind the counter to face Ellie with a cheerful smile. “He giving you a hard time?”

Ellie twisted her hands together absently. “A little,” she said, glancing at Eugene. “Trying to upcharge me for a check engine light.”

The woman gave the old guy a knowing smile, then put her elbows down on the counter, leaning in close toward Ellie. “How much did he wanna charge you?”

“Two hundred,” Ellie said, frowning at him.

“Pft. I said one fifty.”

The woman put on a performative pout. “What, you don’t think I’m worth two hundred?”

Ellie looked at her in surprise, then realized she was talking to Eugene.

“You ain’t even hardly worth seven fifty an hour,” he grumbled, “’cept you work so goddamn fast.”

The woman stood up abruptly and slapped her hands flat on the counter. “Let’s go take a look. That you out front?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ellie stammered, and just like that the woman hopped over the counter and led her back out the front door, the question of cost still floating unresolved in the air.

Ellie cast one more glance at the old guy behind the counter and decided she’d take it up with the nice woman instead. She turned and followed her out the janky glass door.

\--

“Check engine light, you said?” the woman asked, running one hand lightly over the truck’s contoured hood.

Ellie scratched her tattoo out of habit. “Yeah, it’s been on, um, kind of a while, but you’re the first repair shop I’ve seen in hours.”

“Can you pull it into the garage? I’ll get the door.”

Ellie nodded and climbed in the cab as the woman pulled up a manual garage door and disappeared inside. As Ellie pulled in, a beat-up Subaru drove out the other side, the woman’s elbow visible out the open driver-side window. The Subaru turned a corner out the other side and Ellie crept forward, making sure the rear of the truck was inside the door before shifting into park and cutting the engine.

The woman caught the car door as it swung open. This time, Ellie noticed the name patch on the pocket of her coveralls. Dina, the old guy said.

“Is he really gonna charge one-fifty just to look at it?” Ellie asked uneasily.

“I do the write-ups,” the woman said with a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ll take it easy on you, depending on what I find.”

Ellie bit the inside of her cheek and slid off the seat. The woman, Dina, didn’t move out of the way, so Ellie brushed almost against her as she stepped aside.

“You an oil worker?” Dina asked, leaning into the footwell and feeling along the plastic underside of the dashboard. She smelled like sweat and grease.

“Uh, no,” Ellie said, and then immediately wondered if she would’ve been better off lying.

Dina snorted and snuck a glance over her shoulder. She fished a screwdriver out of her back pocket and turned back to the footwell. “The fuck are you doing here, then?”

Ellie glanced to her right, out the garage door at the dusty, desolate street. “What do you mean?”

She heard a tab snap open, then Dina set something down and turned, worming around Ellie, passing close by her again as she walked to a workbench. “I mean there’s fuckin’ nothing here, dude. Just oil workers and hardcore national park nerds who got turned around. And us lifers.”

“Oh. Uh…” Ellie considered lying, or obfuscating, or telling part of the truth, and opted for the latter. “Well, I went down to Big Bend, and then kind of just… headed north, I guess.”

Dina brandished what looked like a big calculator and shouldered past Ellie to the cab again. “Must not be in a hurry, taking these little backroads.”

Ellie scratched her tattoo again. She could feel her t-shirt sticking under her arms. “Guess not. What, um—How’d you end up here?”

Dina moved aside just enough for Ellie to glimpse wires running from the device to the car through some kind of port in the bottom of the dash. “You know. Cosmic twist of fate, or something.”

“You from here?” Ellie glanced at the road again, empty of any signs of life. The only buildings she’d seen nearby were a fast food joint and a gas station. She hadn’t even seen any houses in a while.

“Closer to Roswell. Just ended up here.” Dina punched buttons on the device.

“Roswell, huh?” Ellie felt a smile creep across her face. “How do aliens pay for coffee?”

Dina said nothing for a moment, squinting at her screen, then looked up with a blank frown. “Huh?”

The smile failed, but Ellie pushed on. “How do aliens pay for coffee?”

Dina narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know. How?”

“Starbucks.”

For a second, Dina didn’t react at all, but just as Ellie fidgeted again, she let out a loud bark of a laugh. “Okay, I get it. You never said you had jokes.”

“Think your boss would accept that instead of cash?” Ellie joked. In her head, she tallied again how much cash she still had left from the pile she’d taken with her.

Dina snorted as she pulled a little notebook from her breast pocket and clicked a pen open. “Probably not, but you could certainly try.” She scribbled the pen on the page, wet the tip with her tongue, and tried again. This time, the ink flowed better, and Dina copied a short line of text from the device before unplugging it and snapping the plastic cover back over the port.

Ellie moved aside as Dina passed her again, flipping open a book on the workbench and cross-referencing from her notebook. Feeling awkward, Ellie looked around the space. The garage itself was less cluttered than the little office had been, but the walls were just as covered in posters and repetitive signs expressing variations on the sentiment that a garage was a man’s space and every hour was beer o’clock.

Compared to the walls, the floor and tables were neat and orderly. Every visible tool hung from a peg, and each piece of bigger equipment was placed carefully against the wall or tucked into the corners.

“So, issue’s the leak detection pump,” Dina said, breaking the silence. She was scribbling on a clipboard now, and punching numbers on a regular calculator. “Usually just a vacuum line that needs to get blown out. Things are quiet”—she gestured sardonically at the parking lot and garage, empty but for the truck and the Subaru—“so I should hopefully be able to get it done tomorrow, assuming it’s the line and not the pump. Otherwise we _might_ have a pump lying around. Otherwise I have to order one.”

“How, um,” Ellie crossed her arms, “how dire is it? Or, I guess, how expensive?”

Dina turned and looked her over with sympathy, probably noticing her pit-stained old shirt, her ragged jeans, her beat-up boots. Almost without realizing it, Ellie shifted her body to the side to fit more firmly between Dina and the back tailgate.

“If it’s just the lines, it won’t be too bad. Probably around a hundred.”

Ellie tried to tamp down her relief. “Oh.”

“If it’s the pump—we’ll see. But let’s hope it’s just the lines for now, huh?”

“Right. Tomorrow, you said?” Ellie realized suddenly that with the truck in the garage, she’d have nowhere to sleep.

Dina put one hand on her hip. “Yeah… sorry, there’s not exactly much of, like, a hotel or anything here.”

“Right, right,” Ellie repeated, like she had the money to blow on a hotel.

“Like I said, it won’t take that long, but it’s kind of the end of my day, you know?” Dina continued.

“Right, of course.” Ellie rubbed her neck and glanced at the cap on the truck bed.

Dina stepped a little closer and Ellie turned back to her. She was pretty, Ellie had to admit, freckles across her strong nose, her eyes dark and warm. There was something about her Ellie couldn’t put her finger on.

Ellie wet her lips. “Maybe could I, like, take the truck and just come back in the morning?”

A smile played on Dina’s lips, almost coy. “Yeah, you could do that. I could save your place in line. Since you’ve been so nice to me.”

Ellie snorted and smiled back. “Oh, have I?”

Dina smiled wider. “Well, I’m used to big shithead oil guys who like to argue with me like I’m not the certified mechanic in the conversation.”

“You trying to tell me big shithead oil guys aren’t your type?” Ellie asked, and then she almost clapped a hand over her mouth, she was so shocked she’d said something so forward. She gulped and quickly added, “I mean, isn’t that, like, the only type there is around here?”

Dina looked at her with her eyebrows raised, giving her a new appraisal. “They certainly think so,” she said. “I like to think I’m less predictable than that.”

Ellie swallowed again and crossed her arms to hide her nerves. “You don’t seem especially predictable. How many girl mechanics are there out here besides you?”

Dina was still eyeing her, considering her. Ellie stuck her hands in her front pockets, closing her right fist around the comforting weight of her switchblade.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Ellie looked to the side and then back. “I don’t know, can you?”

Dina grinned. “You want to go out to dinner with me?”

Ellie blinked, surprised and a little impressed.

“Um… sure. I guess I can move some meetings around.”

Dina laughed.

\--

“You sure it’s okay to drive with this light on?” Ellie asked again as she pulled onto the road.

“Have I ever steered you wrong?” Dina asked, tugging her t-shirt out of her waistband. She’d shed her coveralls in the garage after bidding Eugene goodbye for dinner, and underneath, her jeans and t-shirt looked just as worse for wear as Ellie’s.

Ellie glanced at her and couldn’t help but smirk. The grease on Dina’s cheek emphasized her crooked smile. “We literally just met like half an hour ago,” Ellie said. “Not like you exactly had a chance to steer me wrong, yet.”

“So, no, then,” Dina teased, lifting her arms behind her head and leaning back with exaggerated ease.

“I guess, technically.” Ellie put on her signal and turned into the Arby’s parking lot.

Dina jerked her head out the window toward Linden’s Auto Repair, still visible just a few blocks away. “If the truck stalls, we can literally just push it back in neutral, so have a little faith, huh?”

“I don’t really do _faith_ ,” Ellie said, parking and cutting the engine.

Dina snorted and pulled the door handle—then realized and pushed the manual lock open and tried again.

“Thought you were a car expert,” Ellie snarked as she hopped out on her own side. She locked the door out of habit, although she realized there was hardly anyone in the whole town to even try to steal anything, if she’d had anything worth stealing.

“Thought this was a 2005, not a 1905,” Dina joked as Ellie rounded the back of the truck. She glanced curiously at the gray cap over the truck bed. “Guess they didn’t have fancy-ass caps in 1905, though.”

Ellie felt a blush coming on and stepped ahead of Dina to open the door.

Inside, Dina hooked her thumbs easily on her belt and stood to the side. As Ellie came up beside her, the grouchy twenty-something guy at the counter eyed them with a mix of wariness and boredom.

“You know what you want?” Dina asked.

“It’s Arby’s,” Ellie said.

Dina cocked an eyebrow and gave her that crooked grin. “Is that a yes?”

“Can I help you?” drawled the cashier.

“Yeah,” Dina said, stepping right up to the counter. She ordered a combo on a sesame bun instead of a pretzel bun and then waved Ellie over.

Ellie followed her awkwardly and gave her own order, feeling uncertainly for the wallet in her back pocket. Before she could read the vibe from Dina, Dina fished cash out of her own front pocket and handed it to the cashier with a polite smile.

He gave her the change and stepped into the back to start their order. Ellie caught Dina’s eye and felt that blush spreading across her cheeks again. “Um, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Dina said, smiling that smile. “I did ask _you_ out.”

She stepped away toward the soda fountain and left Ellie there gaping like a fish.

\--

Ellie screwed up her courage as she came up behind Dina with her own paper cup. The dining room was empty except for them, quiet aside from the liquid gush of soda pouring into Dina’s cup.

Ellie pulled the handle for ice and waited expectantly, but no ice came. She gave up and pushed her cup against the root beer dispenser.

“So, um, this is a date?” Ellie asked.

Dina laughed.

Ellie felt her cheeks and ears burning bright red.

But, to her renewed surprise, Dina said, “That depends,” as she stepped away to fit a plastic lid over her drink.

Ellie watched her, following with rote motions as Dina collected sauce and napkins. “Depends on what?”

“On if you want to tell our future grandchildren that our first date was an Arby’s in Bumblefuck, New Mexico.”

Ellie choked on her own spit and coughed. Dina shot her an infuriating, self-satisfied smirk as she went to collect their food from the counter.

They settled into a booth and Ellie eyed Dina suspiciously. “Okay, so first I thought I was misreading things and you weren’t into me at all, and now we have future grandchildren?”

Dina shrugged. “I mean, I was mostly messing with you, but you weren’t wrong about the usual prospects around here.” Before Ellie could ask which part was the joke, Dina asked, “So how come you talk like a Yankee if you have Texas plates?”

“You’re one to talk,” Ellie hedged, watching Dina divvy their food up off the tray and scoot the tray aside.

“Roswell isn’t Texas, it doesn’t have its own accent, or its own attitude,” Dina said easily, squeezing ketchup and mayonnaise packets onto a wrapper and mixing them together. “Your turn.”

Ellie stared at the condiment mixture. “I, um, I didn’t grow up in Texas. I moved there after… some shit happened.” She swallowed and looked at her food, her appetite lost. “My, um, my dad, my adoptive dad lived—lives—there.”

Dina accepted her answer without question, just nodding and popping a curly fry into her mouth, dripping ketchup and mayo onto the table. She wiped it with a napkin. “So, you just on a little summer vacation or something? Big Bend, heading up to Carlsbad? Or what?”

“No,” Ellie said immediately. She unwrapped her sandwich to busy her hands. “No, I’m… um, I’m not going back.”

Dina looked at her, curious. “Where are you going?”

Ellie blinked, hearing for the first time out loud the question she’d been asking herself for months, since the night she stuffed cash and clothes into a duffel bag and stole Joel’s coat and disappeared into the darkness.

A foot nudged her shin under the table and Ellie looked up. Dina watched her evenly. “Hey. You don’t have to answer.” She pumped her eyebrows. “I’ll just assume you’re some kind of badass secret agent or something.”

Ellie snorted, trying not to show how relieved she felt. “Yeah, um, you know, you’re close,” she joked halfheartedly.

Dina looked down at the sandwich in her hands. “What I wouldn’t give to get out of this armpit of a town,” she mused, then took another big bite. “Just get in a car and drive.”

Ellie watched her chew for a moment, wondering, and then decided to just ask. “Why don’t you?”

“Easier said than done,” Dina said with a sad smile. “I don’t even have a car, for starters.”

“You don’t?” It felt like mechanics should automatically have cars, for the optics.

Dina shook her head. “I mean, I live behind the shop, and Eugene kind of just shops for both of us. Or I use his car sometimes.”

Ellie nodded, although she wasn’t sure what _behind the shop_ meant. She wondered if Eugene was Dina’s version of Joel. “Did you, um… have you known Eugene a long time, then?”

“I guess,” Dina said, lifting her gaze to the ceiling as she thought. “Like three years, I guess? Shit, that’s a long time. Have I been in this shithole that long?”

Ellie bit her lip, unsure how to respond.

Dina shrugged. “I dunno, I tried to do the ‘hop in a car and take off’ thing, but my LeBaron broke down beyond repair on my way through here, and one thing led to another and Eugene kind of saved my ass with this job, so…”

Ellie nodded and took a bite of her sandwich to save herself from having to respond. As she chewed, she felt Dina’s eyes on her.

Sure enough, when she looked up, Dina was looking at her thoughtfully. “So, did you not wanna answer because you’re not sure where you’re going? Or because it’s a secret for real?”

Ellie dropped her eyes to her hands and took her time chewing and swallowing. She picked the wrapper with her thumbnail. “Um, the first one, I guess.”

No response. When she checked, Dina was just looking at her, her eyes focused and fierce. Dina seemed too bright and beautiful for this dustbin town.

Too bright and beautiful for Ellie, too, if she was honest with herself.

“I have a very serious question for you,” Dina said. She sounded almost hesitant.

Ellie rested her hands and sandwich on the table. “Shoot,” she said nervously.

Dina wet her lips and looked away, then pinned Ellie with those eyes again.

“Can… can I come with you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is truly an old school crack fic, born of a random bolt of inspiration, an outline i've already wholly diverted from, and an itch to write something fun that was less moored to the angst and trauma of canon. hope y'all are here to suspend some disbelief and watch these damaged idiots bumble their way through this together.


	2. Hard Stuff

“Sorry,” Dina said after a second, her question still ringing in Ellie’s ears. “I’m sorry, that was so weird, I sound, like, totally insane, I’m sorry.”

“No,” Ellie said instinctively, although Dina wasn’t actually wrong. “No, it’s okay.”

“Sorry,” Dina was still saying. “Just forget I said anything.”

Ellie bit her lips into her mouth and flicked the sandwich wrapper again. She wasn’t sure if Dina was serious. They hardly knew anything about each other. Dina didn’t even really know what she was asking. She didn’t know Ellie was living out of the back of the truck, sleeping on a shallow mattress, washing up out of a makeshift sink, using truck stop bathrooms and bushes. She didn’t know Ellie was on the run, danger nipping at her heels, all her bridges burned.

“It’s just…”

Ellie forced her eyes back up and was struck by Dina’s face, by the pain and fear streaked across it.

Dina bit her lip and met Ellie’s gaze, then looked back down at her ketchup and mayonnaise mixture, swirling it absently with a cold curly fry.

“Fuck it, I’m just gonna say it,” Dina said in one burst of breath. “It fucking sucks here. I feel so, like, fucking trapped here. Can you believe I’ve been here three fucking years? What do I have to show for it, anyway?” She shook her head.

Dina looked to the side then, looking over Ellie’s shoulder and farther away. She scowled and flipped the bird. “Take a picture, Anthony, it’ll last longer,” she called, clearly targeting the cashier.

To Ellie, Dina said, “I fucking hate this fucking town. I just…”

The bluster seemed to peter out. Dina took a breath and looked out the window, running a hand through her hair and down her long ponytail. “I dunno. Sorry I dumped all this on you. You seem really nice. God, this was so weird.”

“It’s okay,” Ellie offered weakly. She dropped her sandwich and gripped the edge of the table, staring at her fingertips pressing white against the plastic. “I… um, I’m not sure I’d say no.”

In the edge of her vision, she saw Dina relax, her shoulders sinking and her hands loosening. Dina just waited.

Ellie bit her lips again. “I just—” She scratched her ear, eyes still trained on the table. “I don’t know if you know what you’re getting into. It’s not, um, it’s not glamorous, what I’m doing. I’m… like, I fucking live in my car, dude.”

Dina’s hand moved to the middle of the table, as if aiming to take Ellie’s in comfort, but it stopped halfway. “I’ve done that,” Dina said quietly.

Ellie looked up and searched Dina’s face for signs of deceit. There were none. Just this girl, earnest and beautiful and sad.

“It’s, like, dangerous too,” Ellie said, and her left hand went to her arm again, gripping the tattoo so hard she felt her nails biting in. “Like, you’d be safer doing it without me, probably.”

“Ellie,” Dina said, and Ellie shivered involuntarily. Dina said her name like no one ever had. Ellie met Dina’s eyes and she knew, seeing them, feeling them, that she wouldn’t say no if Dina asked again.

“Ellie, take me with you.”

\--

“Okay,” Ellie said, but barely any sound came out. She cleared her throat and repeated, “Okay. But think about it, okay? What if we, like, hate each other?”

Dina smiled that crooked smile and Ellie got the distinct impression that Dina had already thought about it, probably even more than Ellie had, and already had all the answers she needed.

Dina shrugged. “That’s what tonight’s for,” she said, eating another fry. “Make sure we won’t kill each other immediately.”

Ellie snorted. “Okay, but what about not immediately? What about day two, day three?”

“By then we’ll be far away from here,” Dina reasoned. “If we don’t get along, I’ll just hop out like any good hitchhiker. But I won’t have to hitch with a creepy old guy the whole way.”

“Or a big shithead oil guy?”

“See? You catch on quick.”

\--

Ellie scratched her arm and answered, “Never had one.” She tried to imagine a dog sitting next to her in the truck, poking its nose out the open window. Or a cat, curled on the dashboard, soaking in the sunlight. It felt silly. “So, I don’t know. Hard to imagine having one. What about you?”

“We had a couple cats when I was little,” Dina said. Her food gone, she had turned sideways in the booth so she could sit back against the window. Her arm laid along the back of the seat, and she sat with one knee up and one work boot poking off the end of the bench. She held herself with an ease and confidence that suited her.

Ellie raised her eyes from admiring the subtle muscles of Dina’s arms and shoulders to find Dina staring right at her. Caught, Ellie stubbed a fry into her ketchup puddle like she was smashing out a cigarette. “Um, what were their names?”

“Goony and Ghost.” Dina smirked, either at the cats or at Ellie staring.

Ellie snorted. “Is that a reference to a show or something?”

“No, that’s what happens when you let a three-year-old kid name a living creature.”

Ellie grinned at the mental image of tiny Dina. “Well, Ghost isn’t a bad name, I guess.”

“My sister named that one.” Dina threw the crumbled end of a fry at her.

Ellie laughed and batted it away. “You could’ve warned me before I walked right into it.”

“Yeah, but this is way more fun.” Dina’s eyes glittered with mischief. She wore that crooked smile, the grease smudge riding high on her cheek.

Across the room, the door opened and three guys walked in, all wearing cowboy boots, one wearing a knockoff Stetson and a pistol on his belt. Ellie stiffened up on instinct.

“Maybe we should head back,” Dina said. When Ellie looked, Dina was also on alert, sitting rigid and upright.

Ellie nodded.

\--

“Go around to the back,” Dina said, pointing to a narrow strip of asphalt curving around the back of the auto shop. Ellie followed her direction to a back lot with one run-down sedan and a tiny travel trailer sitting on blocks, only one wheel intact.

Dina guided her into the spot beside the trailer, and Ellie turned the truck and backed in so the tailgate faced the great open desert and highway beyond.

When she glanced over, Dina was watching her curiously. “Um, come on,” Ellie said, popping the door and sliding out.

Dina followed suit and walked around the hood to Ellie’s side. Ellie reached out hesitantly and Dina took her hand with reassuring confidence. Dina’s hands were dry and rough, but warm.

Ellie led her around to the back, then dropped her hand to fumble with her keys and unlock the window of the cap. She lifted the window all the way up, then dropped the tailgate and held her breath.

The lowering sun cast their long shadows over Ellie’s current home: a thin mattress with tousled covers; a homebrewed sink with a little water tank and foot pump; a small thrifted dresser screwed into two-by-four framing; a duffel holding a screwdriver, camp stove, and dry food; a milk crate of dirty clothes. Inflatable solar lights hung from two corners. Thankfully the emergency pee bottle was hidden by her duffel bag.

“Fuck, this is way more embarrassing than I thought,” Ellie muttered, feeling her ears burn red. “Am I, like, the saddest person on Earth, or what?”

She heard Dina snort beside her, and then Dina’s hand fell on Ellie’s shoulder, warm and firm. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you the trailer in a minute and you’ll realize you’re living like a queen.”

Ellie laughed and even her laugh sounded shaky. “Well, um, climb on in, I want to show you something less embarrassing.”

Dina hopped up onto the tailgate and said, “The last time I heard that on a date, the dude was talking about his dick.”

Ellie laughed again, but her mouth went dry. A dude? Did Ellie misread things again? She tried to scroll back through their conversation in her head.

“You coming with?” Dina asked, crouched in the low headroom.

Ellie snapped out of it and followed her up, then turned to sit on the bed. “Um, look,” she said lamely, gesturing out the back.

Dina sat gingerly beside her and turned, and then her breath caught.

Framed by the tailgate and the edge of the cap was a gorgeous, blazing desert sunset, the sun red and swollen on the horizon, the air around it bruised a deep purple that soaked slowly across the sky. At the far edges, the purple turned dark, and the brightest stars were just beginning to show through.

Ellie swallowed hard. “I’ve never seen a lame sunset, living like this,” she said softly. “Every one just… like, _fuck_ , you know?”

“Spectacular,” Dina said, matching Ellie’s soft tone and reverence. “I… never really make time for sunset anymore. I kind of forgot this was right outside my door.”

Ellie turned to her, and Dina looked at her, almost shy. Ellie smiled and joked, “Really? What else even is there to do here?”

Dina laughed. “I read a lot,” she said, taking the question at face value. “And daydream. That’s about all there is, if I’m not working.”

“What do you read?” Ellie asked, studying Dina’s face as Dina turned back toward the view.

“Whatever I can find,” Dina said with a laugh. “I don’t have, like, tons of options.”

For a minute, Ellie didn’t answer. She watched the failing light play across Dina’s face, and she almost felt like she was seeing herself from above, watching a movie at the moment where the main character’s life changes course irrevocably.

“You’re missing the sunset,” Dina said quietly. She turned and met Ellie’s eyes, catching her again.

Ellie felt a lurch, like a missed stair, like a fall off a cliff, and she touched Dina’s cheek and kissed her.

\--

Kissing Dina felt like waking after a long slumber. Ellie felt electricity run through her, speeding her pulse in her throat, raising the hairs on her arms. Dina’s hand came up to cup her jaw and neck, her palm warm and rough, and Dina tilted her head and kissed her back, swallowing up Ellie’s fears.

\--

When they parted, Ellie laughed a little, at herself. “Holy shit.”

Dina smiled at her and her eyes sparkled like stars. “That good, huh?”

Ellie took a shaky breath and admitted, “It’s, um, been a long time.”

“Has it?” Dina set her hand lower, flat against Ellie’s collarbone. “Guess it’s like riding a bike.”

Ellie bit her lip, scanning Dina’s face. “Oh? I did good?”

Dina scrunched up her face in mock consideration. “Hmm. Out of ten, I’d give it, like, a six.”

“Oh, a six?” Ellie raised her eyebrow, drawing back a little.

“Yeah, I think you need more practice,” Dina said, and she pulled Ellie back in.

\--

Dina pressed her palm firmly on Ellie’s chest, separating them. Ellie looked down, breathless, at Dina splayed flat against the covers. “Sorry,” she said automatically. “Am I—going too fast?”

“No,” Dina said, short of breath herself, “but it’s gonna get cold pretty soon.”

Ellie looked around and over her shoulder. Outside, the sun was long gone, the sky black as pitch and dotted with millions of pinprick stars.

“Maybe we should take advantage of a trailer with heat, for one night?” Dina continued, the hint gentle but unmistakable.

Ellie sat back on her heels and offered a hand to help Dina up to a sitting position. “Yeah, that might be nice,” she said, a little apologetic. “Heat is kinda limited in this thing. I’ve been dicking around down south all winter and still freezing my ass off at night.”

Dina slowed, half up in a crouch, and looked at Ellie with a thoughtful expression. Then she crawled out and off the tailgate. “Come on,” she said, reaching back to take Ellie’s hand. “Let’s go see my shithole place and make things feel more even.”

\--

The trailer was tiny, basically a bed and a wetbath and a tiny kitchenette. Dina sat on the bed and patted the space next to her.

As Ellie followed, Dina shuffled to face her squarely, legs crossed and hands resting on her knees. “If we’re gonna do my insane, ridiculous idea,” Dina said, smiling, “maybe we should talk about some real, hard stuff first, huh?”

Ellie swallowed. “Oh, me being a bad kisser isn’t real, hard stuff?” she said, still a little sore from the joke.

Dina laughed. “You’re not a bad kisser, stupid. I think I made that clear when I went back in for seconds and thirds.”

Ellie blushed and felt grateful for the darkness in the trailer. “Well… good. Um, okay. Real, hard stuff?”

“How long have you been on your own?” Dina asked.

Ellie drew a shaky breath. “Since September,” she said. “That’s when I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

Ellie scratched her tattoo. “Damn, these are just, like, all for me? No back and forth?”

Dina looked at her carefully. Ellie felt it, despite how dim it was without a light on. “What do you wanna know?” Dina asked.

Ellie swallowed. She wasn’t sure she had any questions; she just wanted a break from answering. “Um, are you, like, secretly an axe murderer hoping to add my severed fingers to your collection of trophies?”

“Wow, that was, like, worryingly specific,” Dina said. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Very comforting that you didn’t even say ‘no’ at all in that response,” Ellie said. The banter was helping to quell the rising panic.

Dina laughed. “Okay, _no_ , I’m not an axe murderer. And please don’t bring up severing fingers again. I like fingers to stay attached.”

“I’ll remember that. Okay,” Ellie said with a deep inhale, “ask me again.”

Dina seemed to sense it was a difficult question, and she shifted so their knees touched. “Why did you leave?”

Ellie took another deep breath—then another. “Can I start with, like, part of the truth?” she found herself asking. “I’ve… never said it all at once. Or, at all, really, I guess.”

“Start there,” Dina agreed. Her voice was the perfect balance between gentle and firm.

“It was… Um, somebody from my past was gonna come after me,” she said, twisting her fingers together in her lap. “Somebody dangerous. And I just—I couldn’t let them hurt Joel, even if they were gonna hurt me, eventually. So… I just, like, left. I couldn’t let them hurt him, too, after… after everything he did for me.”

“They—”

“That’s what I meant,” Ellie pushed. “I just don’t think you know what you’re getting into. Like, if he finds me, he might not stop with me, and I don’t—”

“Hey,” Dina cut her off, touching her knee and her cheek, centering her. “It’s okay.”

Ellie forced air in and out of her lungs.

“Why do you think that?” Dina asked. “You’re traveling aimlessly in an old truck, paying cash, not leaving much of a trace. It’d take some effort to find you, it seems like.”

“Well, yeah,” Ellie said, “I don’t, like, _want_ to die.”

Dina’s thumb rubbed across her cheek and Ellie could almost hear a smile as Dina said, “Well, that’s a good start. So, you think you’re important enough to this somebody to track?”

Ellie considered. After a minute, she gave a helpless shrug. “I guess I really don’t know,” she admitted. “But he said… I mean, and my adoption was like, public record and shit,” she said, jumping from thought to thought. “So it wouldn’t be hard for him to find Joel, and I just—”

“Hey,” Dina said again, settling her. Dina shifted on the bed and moved her hand from Ellie’s knee to her heart. “It’s okay. You’re safe here. I’m not saying you were wrong to leave. I just want to understand.”

Ellie nodded, her cheek scrubbing against Dina’s palm. “Um, sorry,” she said, feeling tears on Dina’s skin where it touched her face. “I didn’t mean to, like, set a new record for you, ‘weirdest first date.’”

Dina’s hands disappeared as she sat back on the mattress, both knees touching both of Ellie’s. “Hey, records were made to be broken, huh?”

Ellie wiped her nose on her shoulder. “Is it your turn now?”

“Sure,” Dina said easily. “It’s my turn.”

Ellie paged through her mental notes about Dina. “Why do you want to leave so bad? You don’t have anything keeping you here?”

Dina was quiet for a moment. “I’m grateful to Eugene,” Dina said slowly. “He was there when I needed him, and he helped me a lot. But it’s not like I owe him anything anymore. And I can’t stay here forever, just surviving. I want to fucking _live_. You know?”

Ellie chewed her lip. “That sounds pretty fucking good,” she whispered. How long had she been _just surviving_ , now? Months? Years? Her whole fucking life, one crisis after another?

“Good,” Dina said, and she curled her fingers around Ellie’s knees. “So… if you’re running, like, how long do you have to run? Or how far, I guess? Do you think it’ll ever be safe to stop?”

Ellie stared at Dina’s silhouette, dark against dark. “I don’t know,” she said, realizing it in the same moment she said it. “I… I didn’t exactly leave with a plan, Dina. It was just to protect him, you know?”

Dina rubbed Ellie’s knee through the denim. “Who are you running from? Like, what did you do?”

Ellie scratched her ear and tried to string the words together in her head.

“Are _you_ the axe murderer?” Dina teased gently.

Ellie laughed a little. It wasn’t wholehearted, but it helped loosen her throat enough to speak. “No. It was… When I was a kid, I was staying with my mom’s friend for a while after she died, and I was there when—when this guy came and, um, killed her.”

“Oh my God,” Dina cut in quietly.

Ellie felt a faint smile form. “Um, yeah. I mean, I got lots of state-sponsored therapy, which was good I guess,” she tried to joke, “but overall, yeah, wouldn’t recommend it. And then they had me be, like, this star witness or some shit, I don’t know. But… I mean, I was a kid, I don’t know exactly what happened, but after I thought it was, like, all over and done with, when I was already in Texas living with Joel and shit, suddenly that fucker is getting out of prison, and after the shit he said when I testified…”

“Ellie,” Dina said. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Ellie laughed again, like her body didn’t know what else to do. “Um… ta-da. The end.”

Dina’s hand felt cautiously across her lap until she linked their fingers together. “So you ran.”

Ellie exhaled shakily. “Yep. Stole Joel’s emergency fund, like an asshole, and bolted. Fuckin’… sorry ass shit.” When she squeezed her eyes shut, she felt tears leak out. “So, you know, he probably hates me too, now. So… that’s great.”

“Ellie…”

“Fuck.” She pulled her hands away and wiped her face. She wanted to run, but Dina was sitting between her and the door. “I shouldn’t’ve—This was a mistake. You shouldn’t be— _I_ shouldn’t be—”

“Hey, whoa,” Dina said, laying gentle hands on her again, touching Ellie’s chest and shoulder. “Slow down there.”

Somehow, it helped. The spiral stopped, like a freefall broken by the surface of the water.

“How do you do that?” Ellie asked.

Dina shifted forward, urging Ellie down until she laid on her back against the wool blanket. Dina hovered over her, still touching her with both hands.

“Do what?” Dina was asking. She touched Ellie’s face and tucked her bangs behind her ear, lingering along the line of her jaw.

“Just… that,” Ellie said, struggling. Dina was just visible against the dark ceiling, like the crisp, clean hole punch of a new moon against a velvet sky.

Dina touched her thumping heart again, covering it whole with her palm. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Ellie reached up, cupped Dina’s neck, and pulled her down into a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> learned from [breezered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/breezered/pseuds/breezered), the AU master, that just bc it's fun and wacky doesn't mean there's no Angst


	3. Overheated

As they kissed, Dina slid her hand from Ellie’s cheek down along her arm, then to the hollow of her side below her ribs. Ellie shivered, realizing just how long it had been since anyone had touched her this way, or at all; how long since anyone had asked her a question and waited attentively for an answer; how long she’d gone without connection of any kind.

Light broke in through the window and they both startled apart. Ellie tipped her head back and saw an outside light behind the shop, yellow and dingy. It threw slashes across Dina’s face, contained in the borders of the small window, cut down the center by the folding edge of the pane.

Dina was looking at her, concern and desire mixing on her face. She had moved her hand away, and she hovered over Ellie without making contact.

“Timer?” Ellie asked hoarsely.

“Eugene,” Dina answered. “Smoking.”

“Oh.” Ellie looked up out the window again, suddenly discomfited by the idea of Eugene so close, of them so exposed here in the trailer right in front of him.

A loud noise started, like a hum or a loud, long exhale. Ellie propped up on her elbows. “What is that?”

“The heater,” Dina said. She simpered in apology. “It’s pretty loud, but it is warm…”

Ellie tried to laugh. “I’m not gonna complain. This place is actually pretty nice.”

Dina laughed. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“I mean it,” Ellie said sincerely. “You know what I’d give to have an actual bathroom?”

As she said it, she blushed, but Dina just laughed again. “Well, there you go,” she said, spreading her arms out wide. “Maybe I’m the one bringing more to the relationship, huh?”

“Oh, it’s a relationship now?” Ellie teased. “Jeez, you move fast.”

Dina pushed her lightly in the chest. “Shut up. You were the one trying to jump my bones.”

Ellie peered at her and shuffled upright on the bed. Dina’s eyes followed her, dark and wide in the sallow light. Ellie swallowed and said, “Can you blame me?”

Dina scanned her face, her expression unreadable. After a beat too long, Dina murmured, “No. I mean, I’m pretty hot, right?”

The smile on her face didn’t reach her eyes.

Ellie looked away, at the little trailer. “Um, it’s too bad we can’t bring this,” Ellie said. “This would be kind of a big upgrade…”

Dina shifted to face the same way, toward the cramped living space. “Maybe in terms of living quarters, but we’d be burning a lot more money on repairs. It needs four new wheels, tires, new brake lines…”

“Tell me more about brake lines,” Ellie said with a smile. She ran her fingertips absently over her tattoo.

A beat. “Tell you more what?”

Ellie turned and saw Dina looking at her in confusion.

Ellie narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me I have to explain this to you.”

“Explain what to me?” Dina leaned toward her, her eyes bright with curiosity.

Ellie chuckled and aimed her blush back down at her lap. “That it’s, like… hot when you talk about car shit.”

“Oh?” Dina crowded up against her side, curling one hand against Ellie’s back and the other around her bicep. “That works for you, does it?”

Ellie bit her lips into her mouth and squinted at Dina thoughtfully. After an exaggerated pause, she lifted her free hand and waved it in a _so-so_ motion. “Eh. It’d work way better with the coveralls on.”

In an instant, Dina spun and slid her leg over Ellie’s lap, bracketing her hips and shoving her back onto the mattress. Ellie gasped despite herself, her eyes wide as Dina’s face swallowed up her vision.

“I’ll make sure to bring them,” Dina promised in a soft, deep voice that made Ellie shiver, “but for now, I think you’re gonna be happy I’m not wearing them.”

“Oh yeah?” Ellie laid her hands lightly on Dina’s waist. Her skin was hot through her thin t-shirt. “Why is that?”

Dina captured her mouth in a scouring kiss, hot and hard, and then she nipped Ellie’s lip and pulled away. She sat upright and dragged her hands firmly down Ellie’s chest and breasts to the base of her belly. “Makes this process easier,” Dina said softly, gazing deep into Ellie’s eyes, and she grasped the hem of her own shirt and pulled it off as the light outside went out.

Ellie felt her throat clog, even as her body heated up. Her hands trembled as they touched Dina’s bare waist. Dina bent back over her, kissing her throat and jaw and ear. “Dina,” Ellie whispered, intending to ask her something, and then she felt a hot tongue against her skin and said “Fuck” instead.

“What?” Dina asked, the words palpable in Ellie’s ear.

Her hands twitched and slid up along the smooth skin of Dina’s back. “Um, nothing,” Ellie managed, and Dina kissed her again and swallowed the rest.

She felt heat building in her, coiling low in her belly, and when Dina licked into her mouth and ran her tongue over her teeth, her body shuddered in shock and fear, hope and yearning.

It had been so long.

Dina slid one hand up Ellie’s shirt, touching her gently and purposefully, slowly baring her skin to the cooling air of the trailer. Automatically, instinctively, Ellie surged up against Dina’s mouth as Dina reached her chest. Dina made a noise of appreciation and ran her thumb over a nipple.

Dina broke the kiss and her teeth flashed in the dark in a devious grin. “Easy access?” she said and shoved the shirt up and sealed her hot, warm mouth on the exposed skin.

Ellie gasped and sank her fingers into Dina’s hair, fighting the instinct to grip it or pull it. Dina flicked her tongue and sent a bolt of heat down her body. “Fuck. D—Dina,” Ellie said, her other hand fisting in the covers.

“What?” Dina asked again. Ellie felt teeth scrape lightly against her.

“Should we—like—Is this a good idea?” Ellie asked, struggling against herself. But she remembered the last time she had let someone in, the last time someone had touched her this way: how it had burned so hot and so fast that it burned itself all the way out.

Dina paused and laid flush against Ellie, looking up at her, one hand resting absently on her sternum. She considered Ellie for a moment, her face almost invisible in the darkness. “Is this—” Dina sounded hesitant. “Is this not what you want?”

“It is,” Ellie said quickly, her voice thick. “I just… we just met. I don’t want you to… regret it, I guess.”

The sudden stillness, the silence, felt cold in comparison. Her skin prickled in the cool air and the absence of Dina’s warm mouth.

“You really mean it?” Dina asked softly, strangely.

Ellie felt her heart hammering in her chest, beating up against Dina’s fingertips.

“Mean what?”

Dina shifted and rested her head on her hand, the weight somehow soothing. “You don’t just want… you’d really let me come with you?”

“I… I said I would.”

“You did. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t, like… take off, as soon as your truck’s fixed.”

There was something a little sad, a little somber, tinging the words, although Dina said it casually. Ellie set her hands on Dina’s shoulders, bare and firm. “Why would I do that?”

Dina snorted, a short puff of air on Ellie’s chest. “People lie. Or just… see things differently, in the morning.”

Ellie chewed her lip, considering. Joking seemed safest, but no jokes came to mind. She felt along Dina’s shoulders, sliding a finger beneath the elastic strap of her bra, dipping her thumb along the hollow of her collarbone. “You’ve tried to leave before,” Ellie realized aloud.

Below her hands, Dina shrugged, overly casual. “This isn’t my first rodeo. It took me a while to get out, before, but I did it.”

“But sometimes it’s nice,” Ellie said knowingly, “not to have to do it alone.”

Dina rubbed her chin against the back of her hand, covering Ellie’s heart where it thumped, loud and desperate. “I wouldn’t know.”

Ellie touched the ridge of muscle connecting shoulder and neck, following the column upward to cup Dina’s head in her hands. “Maybe we can find out together.”

“Yeah,” Dina said. “Maybe.”

Dina rose and kissed her again, her skin smooth and hot against hers, her hips pushing down in Ellie’s lap. Dimly, Ellie remembered she had wanted to stop, had worried this would doom things before they even began—but her heart slogged in her chest like a fist, and her body felt molten inside her cold skin, and Dina kissed her senseless, helpless, dumb.

\--

The heater kicked on again and Dina broke away. Ellie ran her tongue across the front of her teeth and felt a dull ache in her jaw. Her arms fell back against the bed in surrender.

For a moment, Dina just hovered there. She slid her palm across Ellie’s chest, then gripped the hem of the t-shirt bunched up at her throat. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. Her voice was rich and warm, like chocolate melting in the sun. Her fingers worried the fabric. “Maybe we should slow down.”

Ellie opened her mouth, but her body wouldn’t let her say yes, and her brain wouldn’t let her say no. Instead she just waited, scared, elated.

“I want…” Dina started, then stopped.

Ellie tried to calm her breaths. Each one pushed up against Dina’s hand, fisted over her racing heart, her bare breast.

Dina adjusted her grip and slowly dragged the shirt back down, a thin barrier between them.

Ellie licked her lips. “Tell me what you want.”

Dina swung her leg off and sat upright beside her, one hand still clutching the shirt where it lay against Ellie’s hip. Dina said, “I want to come with you, tomorrow. I want to fix your stupid truck and pack my shit and I want us to leave together.”

Ellie propped up on her elbows slowly. Dina’s eyes caught dim starlight through the window, just enough to reveal them in the dark room, two wet glints.

“And then?” Ellie asked.

“Fuck ‘and then,’” Dina said.

Ellie smiled a little. “Now who’s trying to jump whose bones?”

Dina snorted and shook her head, rustling the covers. “Still you. You know what I fucking meant.”

“Yeah,” Ellie admitted. She sat up and wrung her hands in her lap.

“I don’t really believe in plans,” Dina said. “They never really go the way you think. But when the universe gives me a sign, I know how to take a hint, you know?”

Ellie’s smile faded. She twisted her fingers together. “You think I’m a sign from the universe?” she asked with a scoff. It had to be a joke.

Dina just said, “You’d be surprised.”

\--

Ellie woke to an unfamiliar ceiling and a body shifting beside her on the bed. For a second in the bleary dark, she wondered when Riley had snuck into her room.

No, she remembered. Riley was gone. Who was—

Ellie turned onto her side in panic and wiggled a hand into her pocket, groping for her switchblade, but as she woke fully, she remembered the day before. She released the knife and focused on slowing her breathing. The trailer was still dark, but in the window she could see the sky turning gray with the first hint of dawn. Beside her, she could make out Dina curled up on her side, her breaths even and deep.

She sat up slowly and scooted toward the end of the bed. The bed was small and narrow, and even her careful movements roused Dina from sleep, rubbing her eyes and smoothing stray hair out of her face.

“What’s…” Dina looked to her side first, then spotted Ellie near the foot of the bed, fishing her shoes off the floor. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Ellie said, feeling a little bashful. Dina had been right about at least one thing: Things change in the light of a new day. She wasn’t sure what to expect.

Dina lifted her arms behind her head in a smooth arc, looking at her tenderly. “What’re you thinking?” she asked after a pause, when Ellie sat there like a statue, still and silent.

Ellie rubbed her neck. After so many months of lying at every turn, the truth somehow came easy when she talked to Dina. “I guess I’m wondering if… if things are different, today. If you still… you know.”

Dina considered her thoughtfully, her dark brows knitted together, her legs shifting under the blanket. “Yeah, don’t worry,” she said, “I still think you’re cute.”

Ellie snorted, too nervous to actually laugh. Her gaze dropped to her hands, to her fingers twisted together in her lap, long and pale like bones. “No, um, like if you still want to come with me.”

“And give up all of _this_?” Dina asked with false shock, sitting up and gesturing at the tiny, tired trailer.

“Well…” Ellie turned to meet her eyes, serious and scared. “Yeah.”

Dina sat up and bit her lips into her mouth, running her eyes over Ellie’s face. Her ponytail stuck out to the side and her bangs fell loose.

“Yeah, um, I do,” Dina said, almost shy. She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked Ellie up and down. “Is that offer still open?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said immediately, more breath than voice. She swallowed. “Yeah. Fuck. Like… go ahead, change my life.”

A smile spread slow across Dina’s face, like the sun rising over the horizon. Up close, her eyes were beautiful, glimmering and dark.

“Only if you change mine back,” Dina whispered.

Ellie smiled. “Deal.”


	4. The Light of Day

When the sun peeked over the horizon, bleeding color back into the world, Ellie excused herself to brush her teeth and freshen up. She paused between the trailer and her truck to admire the sunrise, watching the stars recede like the tide. The air was still cool, and she stuffed her hands deep in her pockets when a cold breeze cut through her.

Her left hand touched her car keys, and she turned her focus to unlocking and opening the back of the truck bed. She climbed in and dug out a toothbrush and toothpaste, then gingerly tapped the foot pedal so that just a few drops of water escaped. As she brushed, spitting foam intermittently into the bowl of the sink, she looked around and tried to straighten things up: tossing the covers flatter across the bed; stuffing discarded clothes into the laundry crate.

It was hard to imagine sharing the small space with another person. She rinsed the brush with another trickle of water, then put it away and dug out the Febreeze to give everything a dusting of fresh laundry smell.

Satisfied, she pulled open the loose side panel of the sink and ribbed her thumb over the roll of bills, eyeballing her remaining savings. She debated pulling more out, while she had the chance. She had two hundred in her wallet in small bills, all ready to pay for the repair. But there were always more costs: gas, food. It didn’t feel wise to show Dina where she kept every dollar she had to her name.

Ellie peeled off another fifty, then stowed the cash back in the cabinet. Fifty should hold her over long enough to figure out if Dina was really planning to stick around.

\--

Ellie knocked and the trailer door popped open so fast it bumped Ellie’s fist.

“Come on in, if you can find space to stand,” Dina said.

Ellie stepped up into the trailer. Dina stood beside the bed, a worn green duffel bag beside her, a small cabinet open in front of her. She rolled a t-shirt and tucked it into the bag, then shot Ellie a grin. “Hey, hot stuff.”

Ellie rubbed her neck. “Um, hi.”

“See?” Dina said, opening the second cabinet door to reveal almost-empty shelves. She pulled out the last t-shirt from the back and rolled it up. “I don’t even have much shit to pack. Does that help convince you?”

It was impossible not to smile, around Dina. Ellie bit her lip to contain it and her eyes wandered to the duffel bag. “Pretty convinced since you’re packing at all,” she said mildly. “You really wanna do this? With a stranger?”

Dina paused and looked at her, one eyebrow arched. Then, in one smooth movement, she gripped Ellie by the hips and pulled her in close, then palmed the wallet out of Ellie’s back pocket and released her to look at it. Ellie barely managed a noise of surprise before Dina slipped her ID out of the sleeve and narrated, “Ellie Williams. Austin, Texas. Green eyes. Red hair. Is it red?”

Ellie snatched the wallet and card out of Dina’s hands and glared. “Fucking _excuse_ you,” she said, shoving the ID back in place and the wallet back in her pocket.

Dina ignored her and touched Ellie’s face, nudging the bangs loose from behind her ear and holding them up to the light. “Or did you just put that as, like, wishful thinking?”

Ellie batted her hand away. “Fuck you,” she muttered. “What, I should’ve put brown?”

“Beats me,” Dina said, her tone confident, teasing. “It’s your hair.”

“Are you always so fucking infuriating?” Ellie groused. “Let’s see yours, then.”

Dina looked at her in surprise, then gave her a devilish grin and undid her jeans. “If you insist…”

Ellie’s face burned beet red. “Fucking—come on, Dina,” she sputtered.

Dina laughed. “Sorry, it’s just _so_ easy, and you’re so cute when you get flustered.”

Before Ellie could protest, Dina turned to the duffel, dug in a back compartment, and turned back to offer Ellie a wallet in return. Her jeans still hung open, blue underwear peeking out of the fly.

Ellie swallowed against her dry throat and took the wallet. The picture was clearly a couple years old, Dina’s face a little fuller and younger, but it was her, a real person, just who she’d said she was. Ellie wiped her thumb across the plastic, proof the last day and a half hadn’t been a dream. “Dexter, New Mexico?” Ellie asked.

“Up by Roswell,” Dina said, closing the cabinet and opening a drawer on the other side.

“You never changed it to here?” Ellie glanced out the window at the auto shop, as if its outer wall would have the town name printed on it to remind her at the moment she needed it. She was pretty sure this wasn’t Dexter, though.

“Why bother? It hasn’t expired, and I don’t have a car to even drive, anyway.”

“I guess.” Ellie held the ID up so the photo lined up with Dina’s face, and she squeezed one eye shut in exaggerated focus. “Black hair, really? You think so?”

Dina snorted. “Fuck you.”

“You wish.”

Dina dropped a short stack of books into the duffel and turned to face her with an amused smile. “You brush your teeth?”

“I did,” Ellie confirmed, her eyes dragging down Dina’s body almost on their own.

Dina seemed to feel the same draw, because she took a handful of Ellie’s shirt and pulled her into a kiss. Ellie hummed against her mouth in surprise, but as soon as it started, it stopped, Dina separating them with her hand on Ellie’s chest. “But you didn’t bother changing clothes?” Dina smiled so hard her nose wrinkled.

Ellie laughed in embarrassment. “Um, I was kind of hoping to borrow your shower maybe? In case I wasn’t clear enough yesterday, this lifestyle: zero glamor.”

Dina snorted. “Fair enough. Go ahead.” She looked Ellie up and down pointedly, leaning against the cabinet to watch.

“I meant, like, whenever you start work,” Ellie amended, rubbing her neck.

Dina laughed out loud. “Chickenshit. Have it your way.” Twisting, she dug in the clothes in the duffel, pulled out a towel, and set it on top. She zipped and buttoned her jeans, then crowded past Ellie to grab the work boots by the door and pull them on.

Ellie trailed her out onto the asphalt. The sun was already burning off the cool night air, and Ellie felt her dirty shirt clinging under her arms and at the base of her spine.

“Shall we?” Dina said, nodding at the garage.

Ellie nodded.

\--

Gravel crunched under the tires as Ellie drove back into the garage. At the far end near the door to the office, Dina stood next to a row of coat hooks, stuffing her stocking feet into the legs of her coveralls and then back into her untied boots. Her face broke into a smile as Ellie shut the cab door and rounded the hood.

“You must really love your job, grinning like that at like six in the morning,” Ellie said, slowing her steps and digging her hands into her pockets.

“Maybe that’s not why I’m grinning,” Dina said with a roll of her eyes.

Ellie rubbed her thumb over the smooth handle of the switchblade and leaned against the truck. “Oh yeah?”

Dina narrowed her eyes. “You’re just fishing now, aren’t you?”

Ellie bit down a grin. “Fishing?” she asked innocently.

Dina stepped up into her space and leaned one hand on the hood. “For compliments.”

Ellie tried her best to look bemused. “Who, me? Naw.”

Dina stared at her for a long moment, then leaned in and breathed deep through her nose. “Well, you aren’t gonna get any smelling like that,” she teased. She stepped back and brushed her hands off on her coveralls. “Maybe you should go take that shower.”

A nervous tremor ran down Ellie’s spine. Flirting felt strange after so long, like forcing a rusted bike chain into motion, but Dina also made it feel easy. Her eyes almost sparkled; she grinned that crooked grin.

“A cold shower,” Ellie clarified, biting her lip again.

Dina clearly tried to smother her delight. She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “Get the fuck out of here, or I’m never gonna get anything done.”

Ellie ducked her head and scampered back outside.

\--

For one person, the trailer wasn’t so irredeemably small. There was space to comfortably move around and open drawers and cabinets or use the stove. Ellie balanced her towel and clothes between the sink and the little camper stove and stood for a second, looking around.

There wasn’t much to see; no pictures or postcards taped up; no touches of color to offset the muted brown of the cabinets or the tired beige wallpaper. Dina’s duffel lay on the bed, the zipper undone and cracked open like the seam of an empty chrysalis. Ellie reached out to touch it, glimpsing the faded cover of a book visible between the metal teeth.

Then she hesitated, casting another guilty look around the trailer, like it could sense her temptation to invade Dina’s privacy. Ellie turned to face the wetbath, shucked her clothes, and stepped inside.

The water was cold, and it stayed cold, but it still felt nice to shower without the usual cloud of anxiety, waiting for the truck stop timer to go off or a gym employee to kick her out. She forced herself to take her time, even though her whole body was beginning to convulse by the time she turned the water off.

The air in the trailer felt warm in comparison; her towel felt warm, too, soft and worn. She dressed and glanced one last time at Dina’s bag, then stepped back out into the rising heat of the day.

\--

Back in the garage, Dina stood on a stepstool, bent at the waist over the engine compartment. Ellie approached slowly, worrying the handle of her switchblade in her pocket. As she rounded the truck, she could see Dina reaching down into a crevice, her coverall sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a caged trouble light wavering in her free hand.

“Hey.” Ellie stopped beside the front tire.

“Hey,” Dina said, wrestling with something in the crevice. She spared Ellie a glance and a smile. “Good shower?”

“Not half bad,” Ellie said. She scratched her tattoo absently. “How’s, um… this?”

Dina bit her lip and pushed downward until her arm dropped suddenly all the way to the shoulder. “Fuck. Not bad.” She wormed her arm out, holding a rubber tube, and shook her hand out. She reached up to hook the trouble light on the open hood, then wiped her forehead, leaving a small dirt smudge. “Just gonna test the lines.”

“Right,” Ellie said, wondering if _lines_ should mean anything to her.

“Oh, shit,” Dina said. She bumped the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I forgot to warn you there’s no hot water. The propane lines are all corroded, so—”

“It’s fine,” Ellie cut her off with a wave of her hand. She scratched her ear. “It’s not a big deal. You take a cold shower or two, on the road.”

Dina snorted. “Guess it’s a good thing I built up tolerance, huh?”

She wiped her hand on the back of her coveralls and walked over to one of the tool cabinets. She pulled a canister out and climbed back up her stepstool, hanging the canister from the hood and unwinding a rubber hose with a pointed end.

“Should I ask what you’re doing?” Ellie asked.

Dina laughed. “The short version is, testing to find where the leak is. How about you just sit here and keep me company, huh?”

Ellie rubbed her neck and walked backward toward the workbench. She hopped up on it, kicking her heels and twisting her hands together in her lap. “So, um, are you sad, to leave this behind?”

Dina connected the canister and the hose, then dove back down the crevice with both hands and the pointed end. “If I was, do you think I’d be leaving?”

“It just seemed like you and the old guy had some history.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to end on a high note,” Dina said. She twisted her head over her shoulder to look at Ellie. “Leave while things are still good, you know?”

Ellie thought about the night she left Joel’s. She hadn’t even told him about the call, about the early release date. She’d just had one last, normal dinner with him, relishing his tired smile, his graying hair. When she gave the house one last look from the driveway, it was that happy moment that she saw.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“This was never forever, anyway,” Dina continued, unaware of Ellie’s reverie. “Or, I always hoped it wasn’t forever. Eugene knows that. He wouldn’t wish this life on me.”

Ellie crossed her feet at the ankle and swung them together. “He got any family or anything?”

“Beats me.”

“You never asked?”

Dina pulled her hands out of the compartment and shrugged. “He’s not the talking type.” She took the light down, yanked on the cord to draw more slack out of the reel, then flopped on her back and wriggled under the truck.

“I’m not, either, but you seem to talk past that pretty well,” Ellie offered.

Dina laughed. “Well, talking with you was my second choice, but you turned me down.”

Ellie blushed fiercely. “I didn’t say _no_ , I said _not now_.”

Dina laughed again. “Not used to hearing either one, most of the time,” she said easily. She shuffled around under the truck, her boots twisting and pushing against the concrete.

Ellie bit her lip, worried that after all that worrying she’d still fucked it up already. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant.” The cord went taut against the bumper, then slack, then taut. Dina grunted. “Fuck. Can you—?”

Ellie hopped off and grabbed the cord, pulling a few more feet down out of the reel.

“Thanks.”

“I just meant, if you really wanna come with me, and we have to—”

“No, you were right,” Dina said. “We’re probably gonna have enough challenges as it is, huh?”

Ellie rubbed her neck and retreated to the workbench. Before she could answer, Dina let loose a triumphant yell. “A- _ha_ , got you, you piece of shit!”

She wriggled out from under the truck and flipped a switch on the canister under the hood, then crossed the room to an ancient cardboard box full of spare lengths of tubing and metal. She selected one, tossed it on the floor near where she’d crawled out, then stopped at a tool cabinet to tuck a screwdriver and a wrench in her back pocket.

Dina turned back toward the truck and paused to give Ellie that crooked smile. “I’m just glad you kissed me last night. Can you imagine if I talked my way into your truck, and we just, like, traveled together for months with this, like, sexual tension between us the whole time, unresolved?”

Ellie bit her lips, trying not to smile. “Score one for my low impulse control,” she joked.

Dina looked her up and down, her expression coy. Ellie realized she had moved away from the workbench, slowly closing the space between them.

“Yeah,” Dina murmured as Ellie came up to her, “c’mon, why control impulses that good?”

In answer, Ellie cupped Dina’s face and kissed her again. She felt Dina smile against her lips, and she touched the small of her back and kissed her deeper, pulling their bodies flush against each other.

When they parted, Dina had settled one hand on Ellie’s shoulder and the other on her chest, fingers hooked on the neck of her shirt. Ellie drew a deep breath, lost in Dina’s dark eyes, softer and browner in the filtered sunlight.

“Yeah, see, I like you,” Dina said softly, smiling that crooked smile. Her thumb rubbed the ridge of Ellie’s collarbone. “You act all shy and shit and then you do stuff like that.”

Ellie swallowed to tamp down her nerves. “It’s just… hard not to kiss you, sometimes,” she said, unable to explain it any other way.

Dina tapped her chest twice, then pushed her gently away. “Okay, now control those impulses again,” she teased, shooing her back to the bench. “I gotta fix this or we’re never leaving, and God am I fucking ready to leave.”

\--

Just as Dina crawled back out from under the truck, the office door opened and Eugene leaned in with a scowl on his face.

“Mornin’,” he grumbled as Dina spun to face him. “You fixin’ it?”

“Fixed it,” Dina corrected, wiping her hands off. “Just gotta run it and see if the light’s off. Thinking we’ll just run it over to Arby’s and see if it turns off.”

Eugene nodded, but he looked skeptical. “You don’t want your tuna sandwich, then?”

“Just leave it for tomorrow,” Dina said. “It’s rude to turn down lunch, when the customer offers.”

Eugene squinted at Ellie over Dina’s shoulder. Ellie cleared her throat. “Um, yeah,” she said, fumbling to follow the lie. “I offered, so…”

“Fine,” Eugene said, fixing his eyes back on Dina. “Make sure you write it up when you’re done.”

Without further comment, he left and pulled the door firmly shut behind him.

“I’m buying you lunch?” Ellie asked with her eyebrows raised.

“You are, because I’m going to give you a great discount on my services,” Dina said, turning back to her. The innuendo was impossible to miss.

“On your two hundred an hour?” Ellie asked, feigning skepticism.

Dina raised an eyebrow and gave her a long, unmistakable look up and down. “I think you’ll find I’d be worth twice that,” she said.

Ellie’s throat went dry.

Luckily, Dina turned back to her task, tossing a chewed-up-looking piece of metal in the trash, re-spooling the trouble light cord, and dismantling her canister contraption. “So how do you, like, pay for stuff like this, on the road?” she asked as she worked.

Ellie scuffed her shoe on the concrete and folded her arms. “Um, I mostly go off of savings, but I’m gonna run dry eventually. I figured… I heard you can get seasonal work up north with farms, sometimes. So I was gonna head that way.”

Dina pulled open a drawer in the tool chest, her body angled out so she could look at Ellie as she spoke. “Maybe I could find some legit mechanic work up there, too. Even just a job or two…”

Ellie swallowed. It was hard to imagine Dina sticking with her all the way north. It was hard enough to imagine Dina sitting beside her in the truck with the auto shop in the rearview mirror. Ellie couldn’t believe Dina would like her long enough for this to be anything but an unconventional hitchhike.

“Yeah,” Ellie said with forced nonchalance. “We’ll see.”


	5. Strangers

After lunch, when Ellie started up the truck, the engine light was off. “Guess you fixed it,” she said as she pointed it out. Dina gave her a smug smile and a _duh_.

Back at the shop, Dina directed her around back again to park beside the trailer. Dina went back in to finish packing, and Ellie lingered in the open door as Dina shuffled through cubbies and drawers for anything she missed.

“You wanna leave now?” Ellie asked after a moment. “There’s not exactly much of a rush. We could sleep here one more night if you want. Enjoy having a heater and a toilet.”

“No,” Dina said, not even looking up. “I’m ready to get the fuck out of this place.”

Before Ellie could protest, or pry, Dina started peeling her clothes off, right in front of Ellie and the open door. “Sorry, fuck,” Ellie stammered, turning away.

“What, worried you can’t control your impulses?” Dina teased. She stepped out of her jeans and over to Ellie, a mischievous smile on her lips.

“Just take a shower, Jesus,” Ellie managed, almost falling down the steps and closing the door behind her. From outside, she heard Dina laugh, but a moment later she heard the water run.

Ellie took a steadying breath, alone in the parking lot.

\--

Dina sauntered out of the trailer in a clean old shirt, black jeans ripped at the knees, and a fresh, damp bun. She adjusted the strap of her duffel on her shoulder and looked at Ellie with warm, easy familiarity, like this was her thousandth time doing it, like they hadn’t met just a day ago, like they weren’t really still strangers.

“C’mon, hot stuff,” Dina said. She ran her fingers down Ellie’s arm, ticklish and light, as if she was going to hold her hand, but then she just walked past her toward the garage.

This time, Dina led her through the door to the office. Eugene looked up from the counter, surly and unimpressed. Dina went behind the counter and pulled a clipboard out, reaching pointedly around him to do so.

“You couldn’t write the ticket up out there?” Eugene groused.

“Go eat your tuna sandwich, you grouch,” Dina said, shooing him out the side door.

He glared, but obeyed, pausing on his way only to say, “Make sure you ring it up with the till.”

Dina stuck her tongue out at the closed door, a moment too late for him to catch it. She scratched a pen across the form on the clipboard, so fast her writing was barely more than a flowing scribbled wave.

“I’m calling it seventy-five,” Dina said as she signed her name to the bottom. “And you can trust it’s a good price since we’re, you know, _whatever_ now.”

She set the clipboard down facing Ellie, and Ellie raised an eyebrow at Dina as she pulled her wallet out. “We’re _whatever_ now? I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Dina snorted, watching Ellie count out the money. “Told you. It’s all oil guys, up here.”

Ellie eyed her as she handed her the bills. “ _All_ guys?” she asked, unable to help herself. “Never a girl?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Dina said smoothly, punching keys on the cash register until the drawer sprung open.

Ellie chewed her lip. “Feels like a valid question,” she ventured.

Dina paused her movements and looked up, her eyes steady under her furrowed brow. After a second of internal debate, she shrugged. “Maybe a girl. But… it’s been a long time.”

Ellie drummed her fingers on the countertop. Dina looked back down at the cash drawer, and Ellie followed her gaze, watching Dina deftly flick the levers up and down as she tucked the bills into the slots. “That’s good to know,” Ellie said finally.

“Were you worried you were an experiment?” Dina asked, a gentle smile playing on her lips.

“It crossed my mind.” Ellie checked Dina’s face as she slid the drawer closed; Dina softened a little.

Instead of reassuring her out loud, Dina swept back to her side of the counter and touched her, drawing her fingers up Ellie’s bare skin and scar, then gripping her bicep under her shirt sleeve.

“Come on,” Dina said softly. She tilted her head toward the door. “Let’s get going.”

Dina turned, smiled, and linked their hands together.

\--

Back in the parking lot, Dina led Ellie around the back of the truck, their hands still clasped together. Ellie dug her keys out and unlocked the back window one-handed, then released Dina’s hand with an apologetic smile so she could open the window and tailgate.

Dina tossed her duffel in, just past the seam where the tailgate met the truck bed. Dina aimed a wistful smile at the small space, the modest furnishings, the swaying solar lights.

“Home sweet home,” she said, glancing at Ellie, biting her lip.

Ellie swallowed. “We’re really doing this,” she breathed, half question, half statement.

Dina bumped their elbows together. “We sure are.”

Ellie shrugged and slammed the tailgate shut. “Let’s go, then.”

\--

“You didn’t say goodbye to Eugene,” Ellie realized suddenly, a little while after they’d crept out of the dusty parking lot and out onto the road. She kept an eye on the highway in the distance, visible even from far away, the land between them empty and desolate.

“I left a note in the trailer,” Dina said. She lounged comfortably in her seat, her elbow on the window ledge, her fingers sliding absently along the plastic. Dina had a way of looking perfectly suited to any space she occupied, as languid and confident as a cat in repose, surveying a backyard or living room.

Ellie scratched her ear; her neck; then adjusted the tuner dial, seeking radio signal.

“There’s nothing out this far,” Dina told her, and when Ellie looked over, Dina flashed a small smile. “Probably not ‘til we hit the highway.”

Ellie sat back in her seat, wrapping her free hand back around the steering wheel. Her thumbs tapped nervously. “You, um, sure you didn’t want to say goodbye to him? We could still turn—”

“I’m sure,” Dina said. She cut her off firmly, but not unkindly.

They rode quietly for a few minutes, passing nothing and no one.

“You sure you’re not hungry yet, either?” Ellie asked. “I don’t know when we’ll pass something else.”

Dina laughed once in a short bark. “Dude, you have no idea how many billions of times I ate at that fucking Arby’s. I don’t care how long it takes as long as we eat _anything_ else.”

Ellie smiled at that. “Watch, we’ll drive for like three hours and the next thing we see will also be Arby’s.”

“I’ll take it. At least it wouldn’t be _that_ Arby’s.” Dina shifted in her seat and bent forward to pull her boots off. “What do you usually eat, anyway? Do you cook ever?”

“Uh, I cook,” Ellie said, blushing a little in embarrassment. It was weird to have someone actually ask her about her shitty living setup. “I have like a one-burner propane camp stove. And a cooler.”

“That’s nice. Eating out gets expensive.”

Ellie put on her signal and veered right onto the ramp to 285. “Yeah… I usually only eat out if I’m at a truck stop for a shower.”

Dina settled back in her seat and propped her feet up on the dash as they merged into the sparse stream of traffic. “That’s smart,” she said thoughtfully. She smiled out the window at a memory. “I, um, I used to shower by dunking a washcloth in the sink in a public bathroom. Or dumping a water bottle over my head.”

“Oh, so that’s why you smelled like hot garbage,” Ellie teased.

Dina laughed and reached over to slap her arm. “Fuck off, I was talking about _years_ ago, when I was living in _my_ car.”

“Well, you can learn from the master, now,” Ellie said, a hollow boast. “We shower by sneaking into poorly monitored gym locker rooms, or we treat ourselves to hot showers and rude truckers.”

Dina sat up, pulling her stocking feet off the dashboard, and turned the A/C dial up a notch. Sunlight streamed through her window from the east, while Ellie sat in shadow, so she closed her vents halfway to divert more air to Dina.

As she did, she caught Dina looking at her, at her right arm as it retreated from the console. Dina met her gaze fearlessly, in that clear, direct way that always took Ellie off guard.

“I like your tattoo,” Dina said, running her eyes back down Ellie’s forearm.

Ellie drummed her fingers reflexively on the steering wheel. The thorny branches rippled on her skin. “Thanks,” she said.

She moved to lock her elbow, to hide the rest of the piece, but Dina touched her first, teasing Ellie’s hand off the wheel and into her own, turning her forearm to reveal the black rose at the heart of the thorns.

Dina’s touch was light and gentle on her skin, and a shiver ran fast and cold down Ellie’s spine. Her hand closed into a fist on Dina’s palm. The rose seemed huge suddenly, flared like an open wound, dark like a fresh bruise.

“It’s beautiful,” Dina said. Her finger bumped the thick ridged scar running from wrist to elbow.

Ellie wet her lips, flicked her turn signal, and withdrew her arm. She really wasn’t close enough to pass the semi yet, but she didn’t want to talk about the rose, or about Riley, and she wasn’t sure how to avoid it with Dina looking at her like that.

To her surprise, when she moved back into the right lane and chanced a look at Dina, Dina had cozied back up in her spot against the window. “I always wanted a tattoo,” Dina said eventually. She met Ellie’s curious glance and smiled, shy. “My sister used to have this bracelet. It had this—symbol, a Jewish symbol, for protection. I always wanted to carry it too.”

Dina said the last part to the window, wearing a faraway look. Ellie bit her lip and debated what to say. “It’s not too late,” she offered finally. “You could get one.”

Dina turned to her with a smile. “That’s true.”

They drove in companionable silence for a while, listening to the hum of the tires against the road and the static on the radio.

“What was the—fuck,” Ellie cut off as the wheels hit a rough seam between old and new concrete. “Sorry. These roads. Um, what was the symbol?”

“A hamsa,” Dina said, a word Ellie didn’t recognize. She waited until Ellie glanced at her, then held up her hand with the palm out and all her fingers held flush like a spade. “It looks like this, like a hand with all your fingers stuck together. And it has an eye in the center of the palm.”

“Funky. Maybe you can show me later.”

Dina leaned back against the window. “Yeah. Maybe.”

\--

The radio static sputtered into music around the same time they passed a mileage sign listing Roswell. Ellie glanced over, but Dina didn’t flinch or react at all to the sign; she just leaned over and turned the radio up, bobbing her head to the beat.

Ellie left it alone a while longer, until a sign advertised Roswell exits coming up.

She wet her lips and shifted her hands on the wheel. “Did you, um… we’re passing Roswell, if you wanted to…”

“Shit, yeah, do you have a phone? Or a camera?” Dina sat up and opened the glove compartment.

“Hey—” Ellie bit her lip hard as Dina pulled out her old Android phone. “It doesn’t work,” she pushed. “I don’t want anyone tracking me.”

“I’ll just pull the SIM card,” Dina reasoned, waving Ellie off and popping the back compartment open.

“Fine—just—” Ellie reached for the phone again and Dina batted her hand away, the SIM card pinched between two fingers.

“Focus on the road, you spaz,” Dina said. She dug deeper in the glove compartment and retrieved the charge cord, then plugged it into the cigarette lighter and the phone.

Ellie sighed loudly. “I was trying to ask if you wanted to stop in Roswell. Or Dexter,” she said as they passed a sign for a Dexter turnoff.

“No, just keep going toward Roswell,” Dina said. She didn’t seem fazed by whatever memories she had there. “I wanna show you something.”

Ellie followed the curve to the left, watching the exit for Dexter peel off the other way and fade into the distance amid the pale, scrubby grass.

“Is this _your_ phone?” Dina asked a moment later. Ellie turned to her in alarm; Dina held up the screen toward her. “What the fuck is this background?”

Ellie grabbed at the phone and the wheel slipped a little, nudging the truck into the rumble strip and startling them both. She sat back and corrected course, cussing under her breath. “It’s Savage Starlight, asshole.”

“Is this like a cartoon?” Dina asked, a grin on her face.

“It’s a comic book.”

“Aww, you read comic books? That’s so—”

“Fuck you, what do you read?”

Dina laughed. “I—there! Pull over!”

Ellie followed the path of Dina’s pointing finger and eased the truck over onto a wide gravel shoulder. Before them stood a pillar hoisting a _Welcome to Roswell_ sign, capped with a little UFO sucking up a short queue of farm animals.

“Pretty kitsch, huh?” Dina was saying. “But, I mean, is there a more fitting place to get a picture of us together?”

Ellie blinked at her. “A picture?”

Dina flipped the door lock and hopped outside, still holding the phone tethered to the charger. She leaned her elbows on the seat and watched the battery icon impatiently.

“You want a picture of us?” Ellie repeated. She couldn’t tell if the flutter she felt was happy nervous or a scared nervous.

Dina looked up at her, her gaze serious and grave. “Don’t you want something to remember me by?” she asked softly.

Ellie gulped. “Why, are you going somewhere?”

Dina considered her for another long, tense moment. A semi drove past them and whipped up wind and dust. Loose strands of hair moved in the breeze around Dina’s head, and she tucked them back behind her ear. “Come on,” she said instead of answering. She pulled the phone free of the cord. “Come take a photo with me.”

\--

Dina stood impatiently at the foot of the pillar. The phone caught the glare of the sun where she bounced it against her folded arm. “Come on, slowpoke!”

It felt alien to have someone waiting like this: watching her, eager, expectant.

As soon as she was within arm’s reach, Dina opened to her, touching her arms and shoulders, positioning her at her side. Dina swiped to the camera and held the phone out to fit both their faces. She squinted in the sun, then lowered her arm, angling the lens up at them and the sign far above.

Ellie waited, focused on Dina’s arm around her, on Dina’s fingers clutching absently at her ribs.

“Fuck, you do it, your arms are longer,” Dina said abruptly, pushing the phone into Ellie’s hand. Ellie almost dropped it, then held it out as far as she could, squinting at the white glare of the sun against the screen.

“I can’t see shit,” Ellie said, experimenting with the screen angle. “Can you?”

“I think we’re both in it now,” Dina said. “Just take a bunch.”

As Dina spoke, she took Ellie’s left arm, pinned awkwardly between them, and ducked her head under it so it laid across her shoulders. Ellie felt her heart skip, and the phone slipped a little as she clicked the button.

“You missed,” Dina said. She was smiling, and she pressed her free hand against Ellie’s chest, like people did in prom photos.

Ellie adjusted her grip and pressed the button again, trying to smile and trying to look at the phone instead of at Dina, so warm and solid against her.

When she’d taken a few, she suddenly felt Dina’s touch against her jaw, and she turned and found Dina looking up into her eyes, standing so, so close.

“Take one more,” Dina said, wearing that crooked smile, “on three. One… two…”

And as she said _three_ , as Ellie squeezed her finger against the button again, Dina nudged her down into a kiss.


	6. Waterfalls

After the sign, they’d driven through and past Roswell without a word from Dina about it. At one point, Ellie almost asked her about it, but her eyes snagged on the black rose tattoo and she felt suddenly guilty, pushing Dina to open up when she’d refused to, herself.

So, they had driven quietly north, watching the scrubby green bushes roll by, the mile markers tick up one by one.

In a little town off the highway, Ellie walked back out of the gas station to see Dina leaning against the truck, watching the pump. She looked up and smiled as Ellie approached.

Ellie stuck her right hand in her pocket and adjusted her switchblade where it pinched her skin through the fabric. She saw too late that Dina’s eyes tracked the movement, and her easy smile turned mischievous and feral.

“Is that a Slim Jim in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” Dina teased, pulling Ellie up against her.

“Ha, ha,” Ellie said, and then startled to feel Dina’s hand against her thigh, mapping the outline of the knife. “I’m sorry, did you just actually check?”

Dina grinned. She seemed impossible to embarrass. “You never know,” she said.

Ellie’s cheeks burned red as she fished the switchblade out of her pocket and showed it to Dina, shielded by their bodies from any cameras or curious eyes. “It’s just a knife,” she said quietly.

“Damn.” Dina touched the knife delicately, tracing the polished handle. “Is that a switchblade?”

“Yeah.” Ellie stuck it back in her pocket, flat against her leg.

Dina raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t those illegal?”

Ellie looked away, at the gallon readout on the pump as the numbers crept higher. “That’s why it’s in my pocket,” she said pointedly.

The pump turned off with a _snap_ as they hit Ellie’s twenty-dollar limit. Dina squeezed the trigger a few more times, coaxing the last drops of fuel out of the hose, then put the nozzle back.

“It was my mom’s,” Ellie found herself saying.

Dina wiped her hands on her jeans and looked at her, curious without seeming eager. “Yeah?” Instead of walking around to the passenger side, she lingered and leaned a hip on the truck.

Ellie looked away again. She opened her mouth to say more, but there wasn’t much she could say about her mother, really. “Should we get going?”

Dina said nothing for a moment, and when Ellie summoned the courage to meet her eyes again, Dina was studying her thoughtfully.

But, instead of pushing, Dina stood up and bumped Ellie’s elbow on her way past. “Sure thing.”

\--

As the sun moved lower in the west, Dina gave up and clicked the radio off. “How far do you wanna go today?”

Ellie rubbed her eyes. They were starting to get road-tired. “Uh, I dunno. Did you wanna grab dinner somewhere?”

“Do we need to? Or do you have stuff we could cook?”

Ellie shrugged. “We could cook. I don’t care. I don’t have anything fancy, though.”

Dina snorted and shuffled around to sit halfway toward Ellie, one foot up on the bench seat. “You saw the trailer, dude. I’m not that fancy.”

Ellie smiled a little. “Feels like you should be.”

“Excuse me?” Dina said, indignant. “You take that back.”

Ellie laughed. “No, no—”

“I am _not_ some spoiled—”

“—no, I meant like, you deserve better than, like, canned beans.”

Dina went quiet, and when Ellie glanced at her, Dina’s expression was cautious, almost suspicious.

Ellie swallowed, wishing she hadn’t said anything in the first place. “Just, you’re—I don’t know, you’re so, like…”

“I’m so what?”

Ellie bit her cheek hard. “You’re just way prettier than, like, camp stove kidney beans, is all I meant.”

After another terrifying pause, Dina teased, “So you’re saying I’m prettier than a kidney bean? Is that what you’re saying?”

Ellie laughed in helpless relief. “No, obviously not!”

“Because you said—”

“Okay, _fuck_ , do you want fast food or bad food? Just—pick and put me out of my misery, please.”

“Let’s just drive ‘til we find a good spot to camp. I want to check out your kitchen setup.”

“Fine.”

Dina laughed and turned the radio back on. Ellie rubbed her eyes again and squinted at the road ahead.

\--

The sun was disappearing on the horizon when Ellie spotted an off-brand truck stop and guided the truck off on the exit. She pulled up to an empty gas pump and cut the engine.

“We need gas already?” Dina asked as she stretched.

“No, but it’s good to buy something before you try to squat for the night. I’m gonna go pay.”

“Wait.” Dina squirmed on her seat to get her hand down her pocket. “Here,” she said, handing Ellie a pair of ten-dollar bills. “This trip isn’t your treat, you know.”

Ellie bit down her objections and took the money. “Thanks.”

Ellie went in and grabbed a pack of Slim Jims and some chips on impulse, then prepaid for the gas. When she walked back outside, Dina was standing at the pump again, watching the readout.

“You started it for me,” Ellie said with a smile.

Dina smiled. “I saw the payment come through. Sooner we fill, sooner we park, right?”

“Thanks,” Ellie said, coming up to Dina. Despite the fluorescent lights and the smell of gas, and the ever-present threat of curious eyes at a small-town gas station, she felt the urge to kiss Dina, standing there with that crooked smile.

Dina seemed to read her like an open book. “Save it for later,” she said quietly, her smile turning a little sneaky.

“I got you a present,” Ellie said. She held the plastic bag open with two hands to show the chips and Slim Jims. “Courtesy of my new sugar daddy.”

Dina laughed. “How’d you know?”

“You thought I bought some earlier. Seemed like you maybe liked them.” Ellie opened the driver door and tossed the bag onto the seat.

As she turned back, the pump clicked off. Dina worked the nozzle for extra gas again, then put it away and clapped her hands. “Ready?”

\--

They found a secluded part of the parking lot in the back, blocked from the cashier’s view by the dumpster and its tall wooden fence. Ellie parked so they could open the tailgate without it overhanging into view.

Dina hopped into the truck bed as if she’d been doing it all her life. Ellie followed as Dina crawled toward the back.

“Stove is in the duffel,” Ellie said.

Dina grabbed the whole bag and pulled it back with her to the tailgate, so she could paw through it with her legs swinging comfortably off the edge. She set the camp stove and propane tank by her side, then picked out each can and box of food and seemed to catalogue it in her mind.

After a few minutes, Ellie cleared her throat. “See anything good?”

“Good is a relative term,” Dina said, not teasing nearly as hard as she could be. “You’ve got hardcore gringo taste though, girl. I don’t even see salt and pepper in here.”

“Well, see, I had this beautiful heirloom glass spice cabinet, but it didn’t survive this curb I took down in—”

“All right, smartass.”

Ellie drew her knees up and hugged them, watching Dina select a can from the bag and start setting up the stove.

“I can do it, you know,” Ellie offered belatedly.

Dina twisted to pull her own duffel bag into reach and dug out a nice metal zippo lighter. She lit the stove and shrugged. “I know. I like to cook, though.”

Ellie considered that, watching the little stove flame reflect in Dina’s eyes.

“We can stop at a store tomorrow,” Ellie offered. “If you like to cook. Maybe it’d be cool to get some seasonings, or whatever.”

Dina raised an eyebrow, looking up from the stove. She smiled.

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

\--

“Alright, Ellie,” Dina said, when dinner was gone and they were passing the dregs of the chip bag back and forth. She twisted and sat cross-legged, facing Ellie with a smile. “I let you off the hook all day. Where are we going?”

Ellie gulped too fast and felt the edge of a chip scrape down her throat. She coughed and thumped her chest with a fist. “Like, you and me?” she managed as her eyes watered.

Dina smiled deeper and her eyes squinted in delight. “Maybe that too, but I meant like, where are we driving to?”

“Oh.” Ellie swallowed again and coughed.

“I know you were way out on the backroads if you ended up at that shop,” Dina continued. “But today we took the highway straight north.”

Ellie scratched her ear, then passed the bag of chips back to Dina. “Well… I guess I figured you would want to put some distance between you. I know I would.”

The bag rustled as Dina dug out more crumbs and sprinkled them on her tongue like a pinch of salt.

Ellie shrugged. “And I’m a little desert-ed out, so I thought north would be good. Is there anywhere you wanna go?”

Dina bit her lips into her mouth. She seemed to debate something with herself, looking up and away and frowning. Then, she set the empty bag on the tailgate, pinned it down with her foot, and sunk a hand into her own duffel bag again.

When she turned back, she held a book in her hands, the cover a faded photo of a waterfall. She wiped the grease and salt off her fingers onto the side of her leg.

“I guess it’s my turn to share, huh?” Dina said with a light, nervous laugh. She spread her hand over the book, her gaze lowered, her face wistful. “I got this from… a friend of mine, a long time ago. She…”

Ellie leaned forward slowly and leaned her chin on one hand.

Dina met her eyes and laughed again, at herself. “Well, I told you I was maybe with a girl once before.”

Ellie bit down on a smile. “Wow, you _are_ kinda gay, talking about an ex on the second date,” Ellie teased, keeping her tone gentle.

“Shut up.” Dina slapped her arm playfully, then returned both hands to the book. “I was _going_ to say, we obviously went our separate ways, but she was like… really determined to get out of Dexter. You know? Wasn’t gonna get stuck in some dead-end town.”

Ellie glanced at the book, at the glimpse of water between Dina’s splayed fingers.

“She kinda made me want that too. She wanted to see waterfalls, herself, for real. She used to watch videos of them on YouTube, like, endlessly, like all the fucking time. Said there was one in Canada she would just die to see.”

Dina gripped the book and held it up to Ellie, a little self-conscious. The cover said _Amazing Waterfalls of Canada_ , by some tour guide company, with little award icons dotting the outside edge.

Dina shrugged and handed it to her. Ellie touched the raised letters reverently, then checked Dina’s face as she slowly peeled the cover open. The pages were soft and worn. “What happened to her?”

“They moved away,” Dina said, and the answer was so mundane it was almost shocking, after what Ellie had braced herself for. “This was in high school.”

Ellie scratched her tattoo and held the book open on a full-color image of a waterfall gushing off a cliff into a ravine. Sunlight painted a rainbow along the rim. The water was frothy and white; the trees a deep, airbrushed green.

“I guess she already knew everything she needed to, about them,” Dina said. “Figured I needed the book more, or something.”

“To remember her by,” Ellie mused, turning the pages to the next big photo spread. She looked up and met Dina’s eyes. “What was her name?”

“Jessie,” Dina said with the melancholy tinge of memory.

Ellie wasn’t sure what to say, and as Dina stared into space, lost in thought, Ellie elected to stay silent and keep flipping through the book.

Eventually, she reached the inside back cover. In permanent marker, someone had written _See you on the other side xoxo_.

Ellie closed the book, embarrassed she’d read something private, even without meaning to. To dispel the tension, she joked, “So the maybe-a-girl is real. At least I won’t have to teach you everything from scratch, then.”

Dina refocused on her, fought a grin, and lost. “You are so paying for that later.”

“Oh, am I?” Ellie asked, feeling brazen.

“No, you know what?” Dina tossed the camp stove, propane can, and their trash into the duffel bag and slid both duffels into the bed of the truck. “You’re paying for it now.”

Then Dina pounced on her.

\--

Ellie laughed into the kiss as Dina draped over her, one hand holding Ellie’s wrist loosely against the floor. Ellie eased the book out from between their bellies and reached blindly to set it down, then she spread her hands against Dina’s sides, feeling the shift of ribs and muscles.

There was always an edge to Dina’s kisses, like they were a little too hard, a little too desperate. Sometimes her teeth caught Ellie’s lip and Ellie’s breath hitched, her lungs pressing her upward. Dina shifted, dragging her mouth along Ellie’s jaw, and Ellie’s laugh coalesced in the air, breathless and light.

“Is this me paying for it?” Ellie joked, swallowing a moan when Dina nipped her earlobe. “Because I could do this punishment, like, anytime.”

Dina laughed too, husky and warm against her ear. “Do you ever shut up?”

Ellie snuck her hand under Dina’s arm so she could grasp the back of her neck, fingers twisted in her hair. She tugged until Dina met her eyes, mere inches apart, and she tipped her head back and said, “Make me.”

Dina’s eyes flashed, her smile faded, and she kissed Ellie again, forcefully.

Flush against her, on top of her, Dina seemed to envelop her entirely, blotting out the world around them. Ellie’s eyes squeezed shut and her hands grasped Dina’s neck and her shirt at the small of her back. Dina shifted and her knee slotted between Ellie’s. Ellie felt her foot kick up reflexively, swinging in the open air.

“Wait,” Ellie finally said into Dina’s mouth, dragging herself back to reality.

Dina drew back, hovering above her, her lips swollen and smiling. “What?” she panted.

“We should—” Ellie nodded toward the open tailgate, as best she could.

Dina laughed quietly, at herself or at them both. “Right,” she said, crawling down Ellie’s body until she sat back on her heels.

Her eyes stayed on Ellie’s face, then moved down to their slotted knees, her tongue poking out to wet her lips.

Ellie scrambled up and out from under her. She moved the book inside, and as she did, Dina followed and batted the duffels against the sidewall and out of the way. Ellie checked that Dina was inside and then reached awkwardly around for the end of the tailgate, bracing herself to lever it up and latch it closed without pinching her knee in the hinge. She pulled the window shut afterward.

With the outer world closed off, Ellie reached up and clicked on the little solar light. Dim light filled the space. Ellie’s eyes went back to Dina, and Dina looked at her with arresting intensity, her gaze hungry and fierce.

They moved in the same instant, crashing together in a sloppy kiss, and when they tumbled onto the mattress, Dina propped up on her elbow to look down at her again. “Look,” Dina said as she touched Ellie’s cheek, “we can wait if you want to, but… I don’t want to.”

Ellie drew a shaky breath and tried to marshal her thoughts. “I…”

Dina brushed her bangs behind her ear and lingered there, her fingertips gentle and warm.

“What are you afraid of?”

Ellie looked up at her, for the first time feeling both small and safe at the same time, like Dina could protect her or shield her when no one else had. Ellie bit her lip and let herself feel the desire coiled inside her, the pulse between her legs.

This wasn’t Cat. This wasn’t Riley.

“It’s stupid,” Ellie whispered, the thought escaping her before she could trap it.

Dina adjusted her arm and leaned more over her, soaking up all the light in the room, her body warm, her eyes kind and bright. “What is it?”

Ellie felt the prick of tears at the corners of her eyes, and she squinted, hoping to stem them. “I don’t want to lose you,” Ellie admitted, and she gulped down embarrassment and fear, and braced herself.

Frowning, Dina slid her hand deeper into Ellie’s hair. Her palm cradled Ellie’s head.

“Ellie,” Dina said softly, and instead of teasing her or mocking her, instead of pointing out how sad it was to get so attached to the first stranger to spare her a smile, Dina pressed their foreheads together and said, “I don’t want to lose you either.”

Ellie blinked, surprised, and felt a tear escape one eye. Dina noticed before Ellie could hide it, and Dina moved her hand to Ellie’s cheek and wiped it away with her thumb. Dina drew back enough to scan Ellie’s face with those dark eyes, her touch following the same path, tracing her nose and lips and the scar slashed through her brow.

When Dina met her eyes again, Dina’s seemed darker, more desirous. “I want to be close to you,” Dina said, like it was a secret, like it was a confession.

“Good,” Ellie said, swallowing. “Close is kind of the only option in here.”

But her voice came out soft and quiet, and the joke passed them by unacknowledged.

Dina cupped her jaw and searched her face for resistance or hesitation. Ellie smiled a little, and she felt something inside her untwist: She felt herself begin to release those fears, to relinquish the certainty that this would change things, to let herself believe Dina really intended to stay.

“Is that a yes?” Dina asked, trailing her fingers down Ellie’s face, tripping over her throat and collarbone.

Ellie dove upward, sealed her lips hard against Dina’s, and turned Dina onto her back on the mattress, a sigh escaping as their weight resettled. She felt Dina’s breaths roll up against her, and she caught her fingers in the hem of Dina’s shirt and dragged it up, their kiss turning open and hot.

Dina broke away with a breathless laugh and slid both hands up Ellie’s front, peeling her t-shirt up along with them. “Where was this girl last night?” Dina teased, helping Ellie out of the shirt as Ellie lifted one arm and then pulled it off with the other.

Ellie shoved Dina’s shirt up and off, then stopped with it twisted around Dina’s hands. She pinned them over Dina’s head and moved in close, enjoying the surprise and delight on her face.

Ellie licked her lips and grinned. “Do you ever shut up?”

Dina flashed a feral smile and pressed her knee up hard between Ellie’s legs.

“Why don’t you make me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hell yeah, we goin' old school, genderbent!jesse in this story


	7. Night

Dina giggled, scooping water from the sink with her cupped hand and bringing it to her lips.

“Quit laughing,” Ellie chided with a grin. “You’re gonna waste all my water.”

“Our water,” Dina corrected, and her laugh made a wet noise where it collided with the water in her palm.

Ellie felt her grin grow shy, watching Dina bump the foot pedal and take a second gulp from the sink. In the soft light, shadows pointed out the delicate knobs of vertebrae down her back, the downward slopes of her shoulder blades, the dimples below her waist. Dina’s hair had come down, and the scrunchie hung loose near her neck, surrounded by soft, dark waves.

The fall of hair shifted, and Dina’s face appeared like the sun at the end of an eclipse, warm and gold in the dim light. Her grin faded, too, and her teeth flashed where they caught her lip, and her eyes cast down Ellie’s body.

Ellie looked down, aware suddenly of herself. She tugged the covers up over her legs at the same time she reached for her jeans. As she turned awkwardly to pull them on, she heard Dina laugh a little, gently, curiously. “Didn’t think I’d have to worry about _you_ running off after,” Dina said.

It was hard to tell if she was sincere or teasing. Ellie paused just a moment too long, trying to decide, before she cleared her throat. “I was just gonna run in and pee,” she said, tipping each hip off the mattress in turn to work the jeans into place and zip and button them.

“Right,” Dina said. She looked almost a little relieved.

Ellie felt around the covers for her shirt and kept her eyes on Dina, who crossed her arms over her chest, maybe self-conscious too.

“You, um, want to come?” Ellie asked.

Dina released a breath and smiled at her. “Sure.”

\--

The back window opened to reveal a deep, black blanket of sky above, and the dry mundanity of asphalt, dumpster, and security lights on earth below. Ellie quietly opened the latch of the tailgate and eased it open.

Dina scooted past her and hopped to the ground. Ellie smirked as Dina touched the zipper at her neck.

Dina smirked back. “What?”

“That’s kind of ingenious,” Ellie finally admitted, eyeing the coveralls and Dina’s untied work boots. She’d gotten dressed in seconds, while Ellie finished fighting her tight jeans on.

“Sure,” Dina said. She rolled her eyes and stuck her hands in the coverall pockets.

Ellie closed the tailgate and window and led Dina down the path around the station. “Seriously, I might need a pair,” she said. “Just for this.”

“Just for midnight bathroom runs?” Dina raised one eyebrow.

“Did I mention I have no bathroom?”

“ _We_ have no bathroom,” Dina corrected.

“We,” Ellie agreed. A breeze cut through her, and she regretted wearing just a t-shirt. The gas pumps were empty at this hour, but a few semis loitered under the diesel island across the lane. Ellie opened the station door for Dina and followed her in.

\--

Back in the truck, Ellie pulled the window shut and turned to see Dina already toeing off her boots and unzipping her coveralls. She felt her face and ears go red as Dina took them off, baring herself with almost careless nonchalance.

Then, too soon to react, Dina turned back toward her, naked and kneeling on the bed. Her eyes narrowed as they met Ellie’s, and she sat back slowly and stirred the covers up around her hips.

“You coming?” she asked.

Ellie blinked away the fog in her mind and yanked her shoes off. Before she could second-guess, she pulled her clothes off as well and turned the solar light off, climbing by feel and memory into the empty space beside Dina.

Dina settled beside her in tandem, and Ellie felt Dina draw the covers over them both, skimming her thumb innocently up Ellie’s bare skin. Dina slid her hand back down under the blanket and pulled Ellie in closer, and she almost startled to feel Dina’s legs against hers, bare and warm.

“What’s going on in here?” she heard in the black dark. She felt fingers touch her face, clumsy and blind. “What’re you thinking, Ellie?”

 _I want you to stay_ , she almost said. She swallowed the words.

“Just, um, waiting for the reviews to come in,” she joked.

“Oh, yeah?” Dina said. Ellie could almost hear her smiling.

Ellie shuffled a little, and she felt Dina absorb her movements where they collided, yielding without pulling away. “Yeah,” she said, “um, you know, you never know what other people are gonna think. Just the other day, I kissed this girl who was, like, totally impervious to my great charm.”

“You’re so sensitive. I told you I was just kidding.”

Ellie swallowed. “Right.”

“You know we just had actual sex, right? You’re still stewing on that six out of ten joke?”

Ellie forced a laugh. Fingertips trailed lightly down her shoulder and side, tapping each of her ribs.

“Have you considered just asking ‘people,’ if you’re still so worried about it?” Dina asked wisely.

Ellie wet her lips. She started to play along again, but she found herself stuck, holding the breath she had drawn in. She blew it out slowly, like a sigh. “Okay. Um, was that okay?”

She felt the hand at her side turn so it could grasp her, the thumb pressing in against her hipbone. “Yeah, doofus. Did I not make that clear enough?” Dina teased. Her voice was gentle.

Ellie hesitated, feeling the weight of her worries returning. That night with Cat, she’d felt calm, comfortable; right up through the first rays of dawn, things had felt perfect. And she’d been wrong.

As if sensing this, Dina scooted toward her and slid her hand down her side and thigh to cup the back of her knee. She pulled Ellie’s knee up and over until her leg hooked over Dina’s, their bodies so close Ellie could feel the warmth radiating between them.

“You worry too much,” Dina said. She found Ellie’s hand this time and brought it to her side, so that Ellie cradled the soft divot of her waist between the ridges of rib and hip. She felt desire flare up inside her again, rekindled by their nearness and nakedness.

The feeling seemed mutual, as Dina returned to running her fingers over Ellie’s stomach and side, her touch as tentative and light as a ghost’s.

“So…” Dina stirred, scooting in until their hips pressed together. “Are… Was that okay, for you?”

In the dark, she sounded almost nervous. Her hand stuttered at Ellie’s waist.

“Of course,” Ellie managed. “That… um, yeah. Definitely.”

Dina sighed, a happy, contented sound.

“Good. I haven’t done that in years,” she said. Ellie imagined a little embarrassed smile on her lips.

Ellie smiled, too. On impulse, she felt her way up to Dina’s face, and her fingers found the same smile she’d imagined in her mind. “Nervous you forgot how it worked?” she teased, coming to rest on the round of Dina’s cheek.

Dina snorted. “Don’t be an ass.”

Ellie flexed her leg against Dina, drawing her closer.

Dina turned her head and snuck Ellie’s thumb into her warm, wet mouth. Ellie startled and a gasp escaped. She felt her heart plummet into her stomach.

When Dina released her, she pressed a hand flat to Ellie’s chest, meeting that frantic heartbeat. She moved into Ellie, and Ellie turned instinctively, laying back more against the bed.

“Still worried you’re—”

“Shh,” Dina shushed, her knee pressing between Ellie’s, her hand dragging between her breasts and down her belly and below. “You’re such a little shit.”

Ellie swallowed a gasp as Dina began to touch her. “You’re just mad my plan worked,” she teased, her voice coming out thin and reedy.

“Can you just enjoy this without gloating, please?” Dina murmured.

She bent to kiss her then, drinking in any joke or protest Ellie might have mustered. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and let her world narrow to the darkness, the bed, and Dina.

\--

Morning dawned dim through the edges of the back window. The window itself was matted out to hide any light inside, and Ellie always struggled to guess the time when she first awoke. Her life hardly fit a timetable, though, anymore.

She was already a few concrete thoughts into her time-guessing game when she felt movement against her and remembered she wasn’t alone. Dina’s feet pressed up against hers, tangling lazily at the ankle, and Ellie realized she’d never put clothes on, either.

The bed was warmer with another person in it.

Ellie swallowed drily and frowned up at the ceiling, trying to make out the contours of the metal in the dim light. She tried to focus on that, tried to blot out the memories and fears that came crowding in.

It had been a long time, since Cat, but she hadn’t forgotten. The memory felt visceral more than mental, speeding her pulse, shooting adrenaline into her muscles until her body went almost rigid against the mattress.

Cat, who had been so sweet and warm when they went to bed, who woke so cold and matter-of-fact. Cat, who laughed and tossed her the clothes from the floor, who watched with detached amusement as Ellie realized her foolishness, as embarrassment painted goosebumps on her bare skin.

As if the force of the memory was palpable, as if it leaked from her pores like the smell of garlic or alcohol, Dina began to stir beside her, and Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and berated herself, reminded herself, what was coming.

Another false start. Another severed connection. Dina was done with her, now. Like so many people before.

Dina moved slow, then fast, as sleep left her. Ellie felt her arms stretching out—and then Dina turned toward her, and draped one arm over her stomach, and buried her face in her shoulder. Her body was warm where they lay skin to skin.

“Morning,” Dina mumbled against her.

“Hey,” Ellie said. It came out tight and strangled. She felt scared to breathe, and loath to disturb the suspended softness between them, the quiet and calm of early morning before things had time or energy to change.

Dina skimmed her palm aimlessly over Ellie, tracing a square between the points of her hipbones and ribs, then wandering up to the hot tremor of her heart, to the half moon of her clavicle.

“Hmm,” Dina murmured, her dry lips catching on Ellie’s skin. “Your heart is racing.”

Before Ellie could summon her voice, Dina shifted to free Ellie’s arm and draw it around her. She resettled, this time laying her head on Ellie’s chest, ear to her telltale heart.

Ellie worked her jaw and managed, “Well, you just, you slept so late. I got bored so I got up and went on a five-mile run and came back just in time to wake your ass up.”

Dina snorted. She shifted again, placing her hand where her ear had been and resting her chin on it, her face so close Ellie felt her breaths.

“Fuckin’ liar,” Dina said softly, her lips twitching up toward a grin.

“I just have a really high resting heart rate,” Ellie joked. “I’m in, like, medical textbooks.”

“Liar,” Dina said again, and this time she crawled a little closer, close enough to fit their lips together again. She tasted sour, almost stale, and Ellie was sure she did too, but Dina didn’t seem to care. She cupped Ellie’s cheek and licked into her mouth, stoking the banked fire inside her.

Desire chased the fear from her, turning her blood from cold to hot. “Dina,” Ellie murmured into the kiss, realizing a beat too late that Dina misinterpreted her nerves.

Dina made a deep, breathy laugh, and when Ellie opened her eyes, Dina looked at her with such naked hunger she almost shied back against the pillow. Dina flicked her gaze across Ellie’s face and said, “You just laying here working yourself up, waiting for me to wake up?”

Her hand retraced its steps back down, and that and Dina’s eyes and Dina’s voice were enough. By the time she reached her goal, when she touched Ellie again, she grinned and said, “Ah, thought so.”

Ellie grinned back, helpless to this pull, consumed by this fire. “Can you do this without gloating, please?” she teased, Dina’s own words repeated.

Dina grinned impossibly wider. She placed a chaste kiss on the tip of Ellie’s nose and said, “No,” and then nudged Ellie’s knee aside and moved down the bed.

\--

Watching Dina catch her breath, one arm tossed over her eyes, Ellie swallowed hard and steeled herself. “As much as I could totally do this all day,” she said, “we probably need to get going before someone notices we parked here all night.”

Dina laughed as she panted. She raised her hand, pointer finger up. “Just give me… _one_ second, hotshot.”

Ellie couldn’t help but smile, even as she felt her anxiety rouse again. She drew back to sit on her heels, drinking in Dina laid out before her. Her chest rose and fell hard with each breath, but her limbs were utterly still. Her skin glowed warm in the brightening sunlight seeping in around the window. Ellie tipped her hand over and ran the backs of her knuckles tenderly across the inside of one thigh.

Dina laughed and flinched, moving her leg around Ellie and twisting at the hip to close herself off to Ellie’s hand. “I said _give_ me a second.”

“Sorry.”

Ellie lost herself for another second, staring, imprinting the moment in her mind. When she looked up, Dina had moved her arm, and she considered Ellie with dark, thoughtful eyes.

Ellie felt a blush color her cheeks. She rubbed her neck, turned, and stretched to reach her t-shirt. She pulled it on, then shuffled over to the dresser on her knees and fished fresh underwear out of the bottom drawer.

Slowly, gracefully, Dina pushed up and drew her legs under her to sit against the wall of the cab. Ellie gulped, imagining what Dina must be thinking. She retrieved her jeans and dressed, avoiding Dina’s eyes, until she had nothing left to fiddle with.

“So,” Ellie said. She scratched her tattoo.

“You think I’m gonna leave,” Dina said, out of nowhere.

Ellie, startled, met her eyes.

Dina sat calmly, naked as the day she was born, and looked at Ellie like she’d finally solved a difficult puzzle.

Ellie lost her resolve and looked down again, at a hole in the toe of her sock. “It’s okay,” she said, willing it to be true. “I figured—”

“I’m not gonna leave.”

“… You’re not?” Ellie frowned at her, afraid to believe.

Dina looked at her for one more somber, serious moment, then snorted and broke into motion, crawling over to her duffel and pulling clothes out and putting them on. “You’re cute, but you’re kind of oblivious, huh?” she said as she dressed.

“Oblivious to what?” Ellie blustered. She felt caught off guard, and she fumbled for something to busy herself with. She got out her toiletry bag and started brushing her teeth.

Dina just shook her head. Ellie snuck a peek and Dina sat in a shirt and underwear, fixing her hair up into a bun.

“What?” Ellie prompted again, mouth full of toothpaste.

Dina smirked at her and sat down to work her jeans up her legs. “Never mind. Just trust me a little, okay?”

“Okay.” Ellie spat into the sink and rinsed her mouth and brush.

Dina laughed to herself again.

Ellie turned and raised an eyebrow. “What?” she said, more insistent, stowing her things.

“Just, after all that—you think I’m gonna go try to bum a ride with some old trucker dude when I could stick with you and have— _this_ every night?”

Ellie stared, torn between the obvious choice Dina had set up and the irrational but fierce certainty in her heart that no one would choose her, not for long, not for good.

Dina shook her head and scoffed. “You’re a fuckin’ fool, Ellie Williams,” she said—but kindly, a smile in her eyes and on her face.

Ellie looked down and caught sight of the black rose, the ridged scar.

“Sometimes.”

\--

Dina climbed out stretched while Ellie checked the canisters under the sink. She disconnected both, lugged them out onto the open tailgate, and slid down to the ground beside Dina.

“Need a hand?” Dina asked, eyeing the containers.

Ellie pushed the freshwater jug across the metal toward her. “You wanna see if there’s a spigot at the back of the station to fill this up? I gotta dump this out there.” She jerked her head at the scrubgrass and open desert behind them.

“Sure.” Dina grabbed the jug gamely and walked off toward the station.

Ellie hefted the wastewater container and ambled out into the grass, glancing casually around her to see if anyone was looking. The station was quiet. One car pulled in on her side of the building, and she watched it park, pretending to squint at the dull scenery. She heard car doors slam shut, and she snuck a look at the couple that got out and walked inside.

Safely out of view, she stepped farther from the pavement until she reached a crest and gentle downward slope in the dirt. She took one more look into the distance, confirmed there wasn’t any natural water source in sight, and carefully tipped the container to dump the water out on the scraggly bushes and dry dust.

She went back to the truck and set the empty container on the edge, then skirted around the side, looking for Dina. She spotted her, crouched in front of a bare back wall, presumably filling the jug. Ellie started toward her, but hesitated when she spotted a man at the other corner of the wall, just as he spotted Dina.

He must have said something, carried away from Ellie on the wind, because Dina looked up in surprise. She stood up immediately and crossed her arms.

The man moved toward her, and Ellie did too, faster than before. Something about his posture seemed wrong.

“… on my truck,” the guy was saying, his lips peeling back in a slow, smug smile.

“Might be,” Dina said. She was turned away from Ellie, her face out of view.

The guy kept advancing, only a few yards from Dina now. He licked his lips and dragged his eyes over her. “Finally sucked enough dicks to get out of there?”

“Hey!”

They both turned to look at her, and Ellie felt her legs pump twice, three times, four times, and then her knuckles connected solidly with the guy’s face.

“Fuck!” she heard from both of them, and she felt Dina touch her back, and she watched the guy spit blood on the slate wall of the building and sneer at her.

“Ellie,” Dina said, and Ellie let herself be coaxed backward. She staggered a little, keeping her eyes on the man as he drew up to his full height and sized her up.

She heard the sound of water spray, and Dina disappeared from behind her. The water turned off. Ellie flexed her fingers, testing the soreness.

Dina nudged her, then tugged the back of her shirt. Ellie stepped backward, watching the man for any false moves, but he just stared with a red smile.

“Come on,” Dina urged as she pushed Ellie’s shoulder to face her toward the truck.

Ellie stalked next to her. The adrenaline had just peaked, and she could feel it beginning to leach out of her. In the blink of an eye, they were at the back tailgate, the two containers sitting neatly beside each other, and Dina was stroking her arm, watching her.

Ellie glanced at the corner of the building, but the man was already gone. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice dry and scratchy.

“Yeah.” Dina turned to the jugs, adjusting them although they already sat perfectly aligned.

“Did you know that guy?”

“No.”

Ellie waited a moment. Instead of engaging, Dina hopped up on the tailgate and brought the canisters inside the cap. “Show me how to hook these up?” she asked, even as she ducked her head to look at the fittings.

Ellie cast one more glance at the corner and then joined Dina inside.


	8. Checkpoint

They spotted it at the same time: a big brown square flanked by warning lights and traffic cones, growing slowly on the horizon. Ellie shifted to the right lane and slowed to the speed limit, scanning the concrete barrier along the shoulder.

“I never went through a checkpoint before,” Dina said, scratching a nail against the plastic of the windowsill.

“Never?” Ellie said, checking the barrier on the far side. No marks.

“I never left New Mexico.”

When Ellie glanced over, Dina was looking ahead, frowning at the checkpoint oozing toward them. Ellie almost missed spotting the cairn, three stones stacked on the barrier below the exit sign.

Ellie put on her signal and pulled into the exit lane.

“What are you—”

“Grab the atlas for me?” Ellie tapped the plastic binding sticking up between Dina’s seat and the center console. “Look up… Raton?” she read off the exit signage.

Dina pulled the atlas out and flipped hurriedly to the New Mexico page. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“I’m not going through a fucking checkpoint, I know that,” Ellie muttered. At the stop sign, she leaned forward against the wheel and squinted in each direction. “Did you find it?”

“Yeah, we’re up here,” Dina said, folding back the spiral-bound pages and sticking her index finger onto the map. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Where’s town?”

“Left.”

Ellie threw her signal on and hauled out into the far lane. She watched the highway overpass as they drove beneath it.

“What else is here?” Ellie asked, checking her mirrors. No one tailgating her yet.

“I mean, this is a state map, Ellie,” Dina snapped. “What are you asking?”

Ellie signaled and pulled over onto the shoulder past the off-ramp. She held a hand out until Dina gave her the atlas.

“Ellie. Talk to me,” Dina pushed, even as she let Ellie prop the map up against the steering wheel.

Ellie sighed and tilted it toward Dina so she could see. “They only have checkpoints on the highways. We just need a smaller road crossing north.” She dragged her finger along a thin line wandering east from Raton, then crossed to a squiggle moving north. “This is the road we need.”

“72,” Dina read. She reached over and carefully took the book back from Ellie.

“Yeah.” Ellie gave her a little smile and flexed her hand on the wheel. “Just gotta find it, now.”

\--

It wasn’t hard to find 72, a medium-sized road in a medium-sized town. They only had to loop back once to connect to it. As they left Raton behind and the speed limit ticked up, Ellie relaxed in her seat, and it seemed like Dina did, too.

“That’s how you ended up at Eugene’s,” Dina said, lifting her feet up onto the dash. “Why you were taking back roads.”

“I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I am on the run,” Ellie said with a smile. “Checkpoints are kind of antithetical to what I’m trying to do.”

Dina folded her hands in her lap. “Not mad about it.”

Ellie shifted positions. Her ass already felt flat from the seat. “You really never even left the state?”

“Nope. Minimal adventures, for me.”

Ellie swallowed. “Um… so, about that,” she said awkwardly.

Dina turned to her. “About what?”

“Well, I can’t really get you to Canada, on account of borders and passports and stuff,” Ellie said, wetting her lip, “but, um, I hear there are some cool waterfalls here, too.”

No response. Ellie checked and Dina was looking at her, curious.

“Um, my dad used to talk about the ones in Yellowstone,” Ellie said. “Plus there’s, like, other cool stuff there, you know. Old Faithful. Some… other stuff.”

Dina smirked a little, the smirk that usually preceded teasing. But instead of teasing, she said, “There are waterfalls up there?”

“Yeah. It’s north of here… I thought…” Ellie shifted again in her seat. She glanced out the window to her left, at the empty landscape, the mountains in the distance. “I thought maybe you’d want to check it out?”

Another pause. When Ellie risked a look, Dina grinned at her, happy and eager. “Fuck yeah. Yeah, I wanna check it out.”

Ellie let herself smile, this time. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Dina sat up again and pulled the atlas from the crevice beside the seat. “Where is it?”

\--

The border crossing at Branson was peaceful and unguarded, marked only by an almost homemade-looking wooden sign reading _Welcome to Colorful Colorado_. Dina directed Ellie back west to the interstate, wielding the atlas like a pro.

“Thought you said you never went on many adventures,” Ellie said once they had merged onto I-25, while Dina settled back in her seat and pored over the map of Colorado.

“Doesn’t mean I never wanted to,” Dina shot back easily, sparing Ellie a smile.

Ellie felt her lips tip upward. “Prepping for that fantasy waterfall in Canada?”

Dina shrugged. “Got a new fantasy waterfall now.”

Ellie switched hands and rested her left arm on the sill. “You, um, figuring out the best route up there?”

“Already have, I think,” Dina said, unfolding the book and flipping back to the big US map. She traced a finger across the plastic, although Ellie couldn’t really see. “If we just take this north all the way to Wyoming, we’ll only have to cross one more state border, and then we can take the smaller roads west to hit Yellowstone.”

Ellie bit down on a smile. “It’s kinda nice to have a copilot to do the navigating,” she said, catching Dina’s eye for just a moment.

Dina grinned. “This atlas is so cool. I used to…”

She cut off. Ellie glanced over again.

“Well, it’s different to have a map on paper,” Dina demurred. “I like being able to flip between them and, like, feel it under my fingers, you know?”

“Uh huh,” Ellie said, a little suggestively. “You seem like a hands-on person.”

“Fuck you. You love it.”

Ellie hid her smile and busied herself passing a semi.

\--

Traffic began to clog slowly as they neared Colorado Springs. Ellie turned the radio down, focused on the taillights in front of her, and Dina straightened in her seat, peering in Ellie’s direction.

Ellie glanced at her, about to say _What?_ , when she realized Dina was looking past her, out the window.

“The mountains are beautiful,” Dina said as Ellie turned as well. “They look so close.”

“Yeah…” Ellie took in the peaks, ridged like vertebrae against the gray-blue sky. On impulse, she fought into the right lane.

Dina sat back as Ellie merged into the exit lane and followed it off the highway. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Toward the mountains,” Ellie said, turning blindly west.

\--

Not long after they’d turned, Dina glimpsed something in the distance and pointed. “What is that? Can we check it out?”

They followed Dina’s general direction and their best guesses, following a halting, winding path until Dina sat up and jabbed at the window. “There, those,” she said, pointing at red rocks jutting up in the foreground, suddenly revealed now that they’d worked their way into the valley that hid them.

“Garden of the Gods Park,” Ellie read off a brown sign.

“It’s a park?” Dina asked. Ellie shrugged and turned in to follow the arrow.

The road led them down a gentle slope, further into the valley, as the rocks loomed taller and closer around them. They looked like teeth, maybe, or dinosaur bones half-excavated.

They came to a stop sign and Ellie leaned forward on the wheel, lips parted, taking in the landscape around them. “This is—”

A horn sounded behind them. Ellie startled and punched the gas, and the truck lurched forward and jolted them forward against their seatbelts.

“Sorry,” Ellie said as she recovered and followed the one-way signs.

“This is so fucking cool,” Dina said, apparently unfazed. She stared out Ellie’s window with open awe.

“This isn’t even the mountains,” Ellie said, uncertain whether she was clarifying for Dina or for herself.

The road curved away suddenly, the rocks out of view behind a thicket of trees. “Fuck,” Ellie muttered, thinking she’d missed a sign, “where did they—”

“Turn,” Dina interrupted her as the trees gave way to a big parking lot beside a huge red slab of rock. Ellie punched the brake and turned in, slowing to a crawl to hunt for an open space. She found one near the end of the back row and parked, then sat back against the seat to stare at the towering natural wall in front of them. Sunlight cast dramatic shadows from the upper ridges, and small round pockmarks littered the lower half like freckles.

“What the fuck is all this?” Ellie asked quietly.

Dina looked at her with almost childlike enthusiasm. “Let’s go find out!”

\--

They walked for a long time through the park, so long Ellie almost began to wonder if they’d find their way back to the truck before dark. Once they’d read all they could stand about the geology behind the formations, they gradually slowed their pace until they ended up perched on a flat stone to the side of the path, watching the people pass and the shadows grow longer across the rock walls.

“This is so fucking cool,” Dina said, almost a sigh.

“Yeah… I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Ellie agreed.

Dina pulled her knees up and hugged them. “You didn’t travel much with your dad?”

Ellie blinked. “Um… well, not like this,” she said after a moment. “Not just to, like, see shit.”

“What other reason is there?” Dina asked. “To travel?”

Ellie’s eyes dropped to the black rose. She dragged her fingers down the scar line. “Just, moving. When we moved to Texas.”

She didn’t want to talk about Joel.

“What about you?” she said before Dina could continue. “What about your, like, parents? What, um… happened to them?”

Dina looked away and scratched her neck. “You were born in ’19 too, right?” she asked.

Ellie blinked in surprise, then remembered their driver’s license swap. “Yeah. June.”

Dina shrugged. “You know, then. Long COVID.”

“Oh. Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Dina shrugged. “I don’t really remember them. My sister and I stayed with our aunt for a bit, then foster care. When Talia was old enough, she got me out and I lived with her through high school.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

Dina shrugged again. Her eyes traced the seam where rock met sky.

Ellie pinched her scar. “Um, my mom was a nurse. She died of it, too.”

For a moment, they both sat, still, silent. Dina cleared her throat and turned her head toward Ellie, though her eyes went down, aimed at the stone beneath them. “Sorry. That sucks.”

“I don’t really remember her, either.”

Dina turned back toward the scenery and the sky. “So, it was just you and your dad?”

“No…” Ellie faltered. “It was just my mom. Then she died and her friend took me in until…”

“Oh,” Dina rushed, “sorry, that’s right.”

“I didn’t meet Joel til later,” Ellie mumbled. She stared at the black rose. “He was…” She laughed a little. “He was a pig.”

Dina startled. “Oh, shit. Like—to you, or—?”

“No, no, he was a cop,” Ellie said. “But I was, like, a fucking delinquent. We didn’t get along, is all.”

Dina shifted in Ellie’s peripheral vision, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off her arm. Her gaze lost focus, the rose black and blurred and larger than life.

“He was working the case, when Marlene got killed,” she said. “I saw him off and on, after that, since I was a witness and shit. But then Riley—” Ellie squeezed her eyes shut. “The home I was in got shut down. I guess he decided it was too dangerous. He took me in til the case was over and then we left.”

Dina snorted. “An unlikely duo, huh?”

“Super unlikely,” Ellie agreed. She looked at Dina and found herself grinning. “I wore him down, though. He’s not so bad. And he isn’t a pig anymore.”

“No?”

Ellie shook her head. “Construction. I still give him shit about it, though.”

Ellie hesitated.

“G… gave him shit, I guess.”

“Hmm.” Dina nodded.

Ellie swallowed. “So, um, how come you left Dexter? How’d you end up out at that shop?”

Dina looked down at her knees. She was quiet for a while before saying, “Me and Tal got in a big fight. I bounced. Never looked back.”

It came out short, clipped. But before Ellie could respond, Dina uncoiled and scooted to the edge of the rock and stood up.

She held out her hand. “Ready to head back?”

\--

The cars in the lot had shuffled, but it still looked full. “Let’s find someplace to eat lunch,” Ellie suggested. “Maybe there’s an overlook or something that’s less crowded.”

Dina turned the radio off as soon as it sputtered to life. Ellie eased them out of the parking area, avoiding pedestrians checking phones or guiding kids across the crosswalk. Ellie turned onto the street and felt Dina looking at her again, at the window.

“God, it’s beautiful here,” Dina said softly.

“It really is.”

Ellie followed the curve and slope of the road past another packed parking lot and another cluster of rock formations. Farther along, she spotted a smaller lot and pulled in, parked in one of four spots, empty but for an older sedan with a kayak strapped haphazardly on top.

Dina hopped out without a word. Ellie trailed her to the back, where she had the tailgate down and was already digging in the duffel for the camp stove.

Ellie climbed in, dug out a couple of cups, and filled them at the sink. She crawled back over and sat beside the stove, now lit and cooking a can of something. Dina leaned her folded arms on the tailgate, still standing on the pavement, lost in thought.

“Dina?” Ellie finally said, biting her lip.

“Why did you punch that guy, this morning?” Dina blurted. Her eyes darted around, then locked on Ellie. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“He was being a dick,” Ellie said uncertainly. She couldn’t tell if Dina was angry, or—something else.

Dina frowned and looked away, back at the camp stove. She untucked her hand from under her elbow and flicked her lighter, open and shut. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.”

“I don’t need defending.”

Ellie bristled. Her fingers twitched, seeking the switchblade. “I wasn’t gonna just leave you to deal with him alone.”

Dina said nothing; flicked the lighter again; stared at the flame.

“You said you didn’t know him,” Ellie added.

“I don’t.”

Ellie kicked her legs where they swung under the tailgate. “Then why do you care?”

Dina sighed. “I don’t.” She set the lighter down and turned, reaching for Ellie’s right hand. She caught it and pulled it toward her, twisting it, examining the red knuckles.

“I’m fine,” Ellie said, starting to pull away.

Dina held firm and Ellie let her. The thorns shifted on her skin as her fingers flexed. Dina skimmed her thumb over the redness, the one spot where a scab had formed.

“It’s fine,” Ellie said again. “Forget it. Come sit with me.”

Dina looked up at her, wary under her dark lashes. Ellie gulped under the scrutiny, but Dina was satisfied enough to drop her hand and turn her attention back to the food she’d heated up.

When Dina had turned the stove off and stirred the food, Ellie patted the tailgate beside her again. “For real. Come sit.”

This time, as Dina shook her head and braced her hands on the metal, Ellie thought she caught a hint of a smile. Dina settled in place and then gasped a little, glimpsing the view before them of the park, the red rocks and green trees, the mountains towering off to one side in the distance.

Ellie offered Dina the second cup of water, then smiled a little and tapped the rims together. “To our first vacation,” she joked.

Dina laughed and drank. “Sure, Ellie.”

\--

It was already afternoon by the time they left the park, and it was late afternoon by the time they managed to find a grocery store so they could run in and restock. Triumphant with a bag of provisions and a double pack of salt and pepper shakers, they were laughing as they climbed back into the cab, watching the sun sink lower.

“I have an idea,” Ellie said as she started the engine. Dina looked at her with interest, and Ellie grinned and said, “Just bear with me.”

Dina did bear with her for the first thirty minutes, but finally she said, “Okay, El, seriously, where are you trying to go?”

Ellie huffed. “I just thought it would be nice to find a fucking overlook or something with a view of the stupid mountains. Why are the roads in this town so fucking confusing?”

Dina laughed. “Why don’t you just go back to the highway?”

“You make it sound so easy,” Ellie complained, gesturing at the intersection, heavily forested and sparsely signposted.

“It’s that way,” Dina said, pointing at an angle between the two streets. “Just go straight and take the next major road going left. I’ll get us there.”

Ellie grumbled, but she listened, and let Dina direct her by feel until they found an on-ramp to the interstate. They headed north for ten minutes before Dina pointed out Ellie’s window and said, “There, that’s an overlook. Just take the next exit and turn around.”

They pulled into the overlook parking lot right as the sun kissed the top edge of the mountain. Ellie put the truck in park with a reverent sigh, squinting in the sharp light, watching the mountain edge slowly snuff out the sun like a candle.

As soon as the sun was more hidden than shown, the sky began to change, too, deep orange and purple, warm and soft.

“God, it’s fucking pretty here,” Dina breathed.

“No shit.” Ellie undid her seatbelt and sat back against the worn cloth. “We’re, like, just in time.”

Dina smirked, still facing the sunset. “Yeah, you’re welcome.”

“Fuck you. But thanks.”

They sat in amiable silence for a while. The sun disappeared, and with it the warm colors slowly receded, revealing the dark night sky, softened by the lights of the city.

“I didn’t tell you before,” Dina said suddenly, “but this is where Jessie moved to. Colorado. Denver.”

Ellie blinked.

“She must love it here,” Dina continued. She sounded wistful.

Ellie swallowed. Dina had a faraway look. Probably, she was imagining that long-lost love, making some plan to track her down or look her up. Some plan to leave.

Dina cleared her throat. “But that was years ago. Probably long gone, now.”

“You…” Ellie frowned. “You don’t want to try to find her?”

Dina scoffed. “No. I mean, we were kids, you know? Why wreck that perfect memory?”

Ellie stared at her, trying to understand. “What do you mean?”

Dina cut her eyes to Ellie and shrugged. “I mean… like, now, I can look back on it and think it would’ve been so great, you know? It would’ve been perfect, if it hadn’t gotten cut short, if her parents didn’t fuck it up like they did. But if I found her now, I’d just be proving that wrong. I’d just get disappointed.”

It was impossible not to think of Riley.

“How do you know?” Ellie asked. It came out rough and dry. She gulped. “How do you know it wouldn’t actually be perfect?”

Dina snorted and looked at Ellie with a grin, brows furrowed, amused. “Nothing’s perfect, Ellie. Come on.”

Cowed, Ellie looked away and bit the inside of her cheek.

“You can think that way when you’re a kid,” Dina continued, more gently, “but then you get older and you figure out it’s never really like that. People are just… people. Even people you love.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said without meaning it. The thought of it was crushing, dizzying, even if it struck a truth she’d always known, deep down. And it wasn’t like she wasn’t well aware of Riley’s flaws, the flaws that led directly to her untimely death. Riley wasn’t perfect.

She startled when something touched her. She looked over and found Dina’s hand covering her own, rough and warm.

“That’s not an insult,” Dina reassured her. “I just mean, it’s nice sometimes, leaving some of those old fantasies intact, you know? I don’t want to find out why she and I wouldn’t have worked. It’s nice to just imagine… maybe we would’ve, if things were different.”

Ellie peered at Dina, so open yet so careful. “Is Jessie the reason you ran away?” Ellie asked quietly.

Dina blinked in surprise. “No,” she said, drawing her hand back. She looked down at her lap.

“Oh.” Ellie fumbled. “Sorry.”

Dina looked farther away, out her window, and crossed her arms. “Should we make some dinner? Or do you want to camp somewhere else?”

Ellie bit her lip. She waited, but Dina didn’t turn back toward her. Finally, she shrugged and said, “Here’s fine.”

“Great.” Dina opened the door and hopped out.


	9. Paths

Dina was quiet through dinner, and when they closed up the truck, changed clothes, brushed teeth. Ellie broke the silence a few times, but each time Dina clammed up, Ellie found she was too chicken to push her. By the time Ellie followed her into the bed and turned out the solar light, she had made peace with the stone settled in her stomach that told her Dina would be gone in the morning.

Then, just as she was drifting off to sleep, she felt Dina’s hands reach for her, turn her, open her. It felt almost dreamlike this time, surrounded by eerie darkness and silence, overwhelmed by Dina’s hands skimming over her clothes and then her skin. Ellie started to speak, but Dina shushed her and fit their lips together instead, kissing her so firmly it almost seemed like she was trying to communicate some message, some ancient, carnal cipher.

Ellie wasn’t sure what the message was.

She almost thought Dina would push her away, when she went to reciprocate, but Dina accepted her eagerly, hungrily, and Ellie thought she felt tears when her nose bumped Dina’s cheek. When they finished, Dina curled into herself, facing away, and Ellie retreated to her side of the little bed, sleepy and worried and confused.

Dina reached out, still facing away, and pressed her warm hand against Ellie’s side. Ellie felt her heartbeat settle a little, her fears dampened, her thoughts slowed.

She listened for a long time, but she never heard tears, or sniffling, or crying. She heard only Dina’s breaths, long and even, the rhythm of sound slumber.

\--

If she hadn’t woken naked, she would’ve thought it was a dream, after all.

Dina stirred beside her and rolled over, seeking Ellie without waking, her hands groping blindly in the sheets. She coiled around Ellie like a squirrel clutching an acorn.

Her face was startlingly close. Ellie could see each freckle; her flickering eyelids; one rogue dark hair centered between her brows.

She seemed to feel Ellie’s attention, because her brows furrowed together in a frown and her breaths shortened slightly and her fingers flexed.

“Morning,” Ellie said softly. She wondered if the night’s sleep would act as a reset, or if Dina would remain reserved and distant.

Dina nuzzled into Ellie’s shoulder. “You woke me up,” she grumbled.

Ellie couldn’t help but laugh. “Did not. You came crawling over to me.”

Dina cracked one eye open to glare at Ellie. “Woke me up.”

Ellie bit down on her smile and said nothing. She watched Dina scowl, turn onto her back, and stretch widely and languidly. The sheet slipped down as she arched her back, but Dina paid it no mind as she flopped onto her pillow.

“Sleep okay?” Ellie ventured.

“Pretty good.” Dina scavenged her clothes, threw them on, and crawled down to the tailgate, where she unlatched the window and lifted it just a few inches so she could peer outside.

Ellie sat up and slipped her shirt on. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Dina said, letting the window fall closed. She simpered. “It’s just cool to wake up in a new place every day like this.”

Ellie snorted. “Parking lots of the world,” she joked.

Dina laughed. “You can’t even let me romanticize shit a little, even at the crack of dawn?” She shook her head as she crawled to the sink and wet her toothbrush. “No fucking mercy.”

“Sorry, my bad,” Ellie said, laughing with her. “Romanticize away. I’m fuckin’ Aladdin, showing you the world.”

Dina grinned and spat toothpaste foam. “Okay, now _you’re_ overselling it.”

Ellie climbed out of bed and retrieved her jeans. “You don’t wanna be Jasmine?”

“We are way too old to model our relationship on a kids’ movie.” Dina was still grinning, undercutting her warning tone.

Ellie struggled to keep a straight face. “Here I figured Jasmine was a compliment. Damn.”

“Not really.” Dina shrugged. “The CGI made her face so, so weird. Don’t you think?”

“Oh. I only ever saw the old animated one,” Ellie said, realizing her mistake. “Marlene’s movie collection was pretty ancient.”

Dina smiled her big, crooked smile this time. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that in your mind, it was a compliment.”

“Gracious of you.”

“That’s me.”

\--

When they piled into the cab, Ellie started the engine and Dina said, “Looked better at sunset,” looking at the mountains.

“Kind of an unfair comparison though, huh?” Ellie asked, hesitating with her hand on the gearshift.

“Yeah, maybe. Guess sunset is seeing them in their best light.”

Ellie eyed her thoughtfully. “Glad we made it in time, last night.”

Dina smiled at her. “Me, too.”

Ellie shifted into reverse and guided the truck out of the space and back onto the highway. She almost forgot they were on the wrong side until Dina pointed at the first upcoming exit sign to remind her to turn around.

When they’d settled into the traffic heading north, Ellie cleared her throat and said, “You wanna maybe grab some breakfast in Denver? There’s bound to be some cool stuff there.”

“You been there before?” Dina asked, interested.

Ellie bit her lip. “Uh, no. I just assumed…”

Dina settled back in her seat. “Oh.” She drummed her fingers on the sill and then asked, “Where have you been, all? You said you traveled at one point…”

Ellie spared her a glance and switched hands on the wheel. The brambles on her right arm filled her vision when she looked forward again. “Uh, we drove from Boston to Texas.”

“Boston?” Dina sat up again and pulled out the atlas. “I didn’t know you were from there.”

“It was a long time ago.” Ellie switched her hands back, pinning the rose against her side, out of view.

“Fuck, that’s far.” Dina had opened the US map and pinned her pointer fingers to the two anchors.

Ellie smiled a little, thinking back on it. She and Joel had still been a mismatched pair, only a few months into their uneasy truce. She’d spent most of the ride annoying him. She wondered what he thought now, when he looked back on that time. Did he remember her more fondly? Had he had more fun with her than he let slip?

“Austin, right?” Dina was saying. She found it with her left hand. “That’s a lot of states.”

“Yeah, we took, like, a week, I think. Maybe a little less. Joel wouldn’t let me drive.”

“Why not?” Dina asked.

Ellie glanced at her and caught that crooked smile again. She smiled back. “Well, I didn’t have a license, for one,” she said with a laugh.

“I’m surprised you let that stop you,” Dina teased.

“I told you he was a cop,” Ellie said with a laugh. “He wasn’t on board. Plus we hit a ton of checkpoints. You know.”

“Every state still has those?” Dina traced a straight line between Boston and Austin.

Ellie tried to remember. “I think there were a couple that weren’t actually active,” she said, thinking of another squat brown building with empty windows and no soldiers. “I’m not sure.”

“What do they do?” Dina asked, her voice streaked faintly with nerves, like faint trickles of color in a slab of white marble.

Ellie shrugged. “Scan your license and type shit in a computer. Beats me.”

“Hmm.”

“I just… it doesn’t feel like a good idea, if you’re trying to stay out of sight, you know?” Ellie chewed her lip. Joel had always given her the impression that David was resourceful, as killers went. Who knew what connections he might have?

“Yeah, no, I agree,” Dina said, still studying the map.

They sat in silence for a few minutes until a rough patch of road jostled them in their seats. When it passed, Dina tucked one leg up under herself and said, “Did you see anything cool on the way there?”

Ellie shook her head. “We didn’t stop much. And there wasn’t a whole lot to see.”

Dina looked at her thoughtfully. “When did you move? How old were you?”

It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Uh, I guess like five years ago? Or, shit, almost six. I keep forgetting it’s already spring…”

“Huh.” A smile flickered on Dina’s face.

Ellie glanced at her. “What?”

“It’s just funny.” Dina splayed her hand flat on the map. “You and Jessie moved at, like, almost the same time. Is fifteen a cursed age?”

Ellie rubbed her neck. “Uh, I was fourteen. But, maybe.”

“Hmm,” Dina hummed again.

They rode a little longer in silence. Ellie found herself strangely soothed by the memory of the trip, despite all the trauma that precipitated it. It felt nice to think back on happy times with Joel, even if she might never see him again.

One part of the trip stuck out to her, and she rolled it around on her tongue for a while before she worked up the nerve to share it. “Actually, we did stop one place,” she admitted.

Dina readied her map and smiled at her. “Lay it on me.”

“Um, it was this cool old theater in Nashville. Joel really wanted to stop there when we drove through. The Grand Ole Opry.”

“That’s the most Texan I’ve heard you sound,” Dina said with a smirk.

Ellie laughed. “Shut up. That’s the actual name. It’s on the signs and everything.”

Dina propped her feet up on the dash. “Yeah, sure. So what’s so special about it?”

“I guess like all the old country greats played there. It’s like a rite of passage type deal. So, the theater’s been around forever and everyone plays there at some point, or something. Plus the grounds were really cool; they had these huge guitar statues you could take pictures with and shit.”

Dina leaned forward and opened the glove box. Ellie sat up, alert. “What’re you doing?”

“Looking for these supposed pictures, obviously,” Dina said, powering up the old cell phone.

Ellie fought the urge to make a grab for the phone. “They’re not on there,” she bristled.

“Really?” Dina said, unaware of or unbothered by Ellie’s distress. She held the phone out to Ellie, who turned and realized a beat too late that Dina was being sneaky and using Ellie’s face to unlock the passcode.

“You fucking sneak,” Ellie said, blushing and trying to remember what was on the phone at all.

“So you went to this super old theater in Nashville,” Dina prompted her. She tapped the screen dispassionately, revealing no clues about what she was finding.

Ellie forced her eyes to the road.

“Was that, like, your first step in converting to Texan?” Dina teased.

“Fuck you,” Ellie said. “I’m no Texan.”

Dina laughed. It was hard to stay mad, hearing that laugh.

“Did you, like, go on a tour? Or is it still a real theater?” Dina continued.

“It’s still a real theater. Joel bought tickets from a hawker and we saw Billie Rae Cyrus.”

Dina grinned. “You shitting me? That’s actually pretty cool.”

Ellie bit down on a smile. “Yeah. It actually was pretty cool. Not that I would admit it, back then.”

After a moment, Ellie realized Dina had stopped swiping on the phone screen. Before she could ask what she’d found, Dina said, “He seems like a good dad.”

“Yeah.” Ellie swallowed. “He is.”

She cut her eyes to Dina again.

“What are you looking at, on there?”

“Looks like you and him,” Dina said. Her voice betrayed nothing. “Don’t worry so much. This is, like, the only photo on here that even has you in it.”

It was true, in retrospect, but it still felt like it introduced some imbalance between them. “You’ll have to forgive me getting a little nervous about a pretty girl snooping through my stuff. At this rate, you’ll be digging through my journal next.”

As soon as she said it, she froze, her hand curling tight enough on the wheel to bleach her knuckles white.

“Journal, huh?” Dina asked, smooth as cream.

Ellie cleared her throat forcefully. “Um, look at that, we’re almost to Denver,” she said and pointed. A sign declared _DENVER, NEXT 30 EXITS_.

“When did you get your tattoo?” Dina asked, hopping neatly to another overly-personal topic. “Was this the artist?” She held up the phone, and Ellie only needed one glance to recognize the photo of her raw ink with a triumphant Cat showing it off.

“Okay,” Ellie said, reaching out and firmly prying the phone from Dina’s hands, “let’s save some personal confessions for later, okay?”

Dina laughed, fucking laughed, and took the phone back and pointedly held the power button down. “Okay, touchy, here, I’m turning it off.”

Ellie made a shoving motion and retreated to the driver’s side, closing herself off with her right hand on the wheel and her shoulder raised between them. “I’m fine with sharing the space and everything, but some of this stuff is mine.”

“Okay, jeez.”

Ellie snuck a look and saw Dina close up the atlas and aim her gaze out the window. The annoyance ebbed, leaving guilt in its wake.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” Dina said with a shrug, “you’re right.”

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you, though.”

“It’s okay.”

Ellie chewed her lip. Her shoulder relaxed and sank down from her ear. “I… I’m not used to, like, talking about this stuff,” she said, more meekly than she wanted.

Dina waited a beat, and when she turned to reply, her voice was softer. “What stuff?”

“Any of it.” Ellie wet her lips. “I’ve been on my own a while. And Joel wasn’t, like, a big talker, either.”

Dina was quiet for a long moment. They passed another exit.

“Yesterday was the first time I talked about Talia in years,” Dina said.

“Really?” Ellie said, although it wasn’t hard to believe, given how curt and uncomfortable Dina had been about it.

“Any of it,” Dina continued, waving a hand. “My parents. Tal. It’s… hard, to talk about that stuff.”

Ellie swapped hands and scratched her ear. She caught Dina’s eye. “The hard stuff.”

Dina stared, then snorted. “Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.”

\--

Traffic began to clot as they worked their way north, until Dina sat up and said, “Did you still want to stop to eat?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ellie said, craning her neck to check her blind spot. There was no space to pass the semi, so she sat back and looked at Dina’s side. “You see something?”

“River North Art District,” Dina said, pointing to a blue attractions sign. “The last sign listed a bunch of food places at this exit.”

“Sold.” Ellie slapped her signal on and moved into the exit lane.

They followed the road down a long curved ramp overlooking what looked to mostly be warehouses. “You sure this is it?” Ellie asked needlessly.

“Beats me. I’ve never been here,” Dina said.

“I know,” Ellie amended, “I just mean, it looks so barren…”

As they left the ramp, Ellie continued blindly down the same street until Dina sat up and pointed again. “There, RINO district,” Dina read. “Turn up here.”

Ellie followed Dina’s gift for spotting small signs until they were startled by a flash of vibrant color on the broad side of a building ahead.

“What is that?” Ellie asked, unable to make it out while still watching the road.

“It’s a huge mural,” Dina said, sitting up against the passenger window. “They did say ‘art district’…”

The next blocks revealed more and more snatches of bright colors, poking out of the corners between buildings and lighting otherwise bleak parking lots. Ellie found a spot in street parking and wiggled the truck into the lines and out of the street.

“You wanna go walk around?” Dina asked, her eyes alight with nerves or excitement.

Ellie bit her lip and peered out the windshield at the buildings near them, looking for the telltale glass dome of surveillance cameras. “Do you know, is Denver an EAGLE city?”

Dina frowned. “I don’t know. I thought those were more out east?”

Ellie scratched her chin, weighing the risk. If it was under EAGLE, there was a good chance their faces would be scanned, recognized, and catalogued, which was exactly what they’d avoided by skipping the state border checkpoint. But if it wasn’t under EAGLE, hiding their faces would also draw attention.

As she ruminated, she noticed Dina flipping pages in the atlas. “What year was EAGLE again?” she asked.

Ellie wracked her brain for US history readings. “I want to say ’24?”

“Sweet.” Dina flipped from the front copyright page to the back index, and then to a page near the back. “Denver is not under EAGLE, at least as of 2025, when your old ass atlas was printed.”

“The fuck? That’s in the atlas?”

Dina pressed a fingertip to the page and tilted it. “Mhmm. ‘Travel Prepared!’” she read off the heading.

Ellie eyed the few passersby in view. “Seems right, at least. I don’t see anyone with masks on.”

“I wondered why those were more common other places.”

“In Boston we used to wear them to throw off the cameras.”

Dina shot her a crooked smile. “Back when you were a badass criminal?”

Ellie smirked in response. “More like a piece of shit troublemaker.”

“Not much has changed, then?”

Ellie felt her smirk falter. In truth, deep down, she really did want to believe she’d changed. She could’ve stood her ground like she once would’ve: been bold, but stupid. This time she ran to save someone else’s hide, for once.

Dina nudged her elbow. “C’mon, troublemaker. Let’s see what River North is all about.”


	10. Art & Beauty

River North was all about street art. They quickly discovered that most of the murals were tucked in the system of alleyways, each one harboring secret worlds of color full of stories bleeding one into another. Some were separated by rusted back doors or gated dumpsters; others rubbed elbows closely with their neighbors, distinguishable only by differences of style and composition, a loud chorus of many voices.

“This is so fucking cool,” Ellie said eventually, finally finding her voice after a full block gaping in silence.

When she turned, Dina had Ellie’s old phone, clearly taking a photo of Ellie and the murals behind her. Ellie lifted a hand to block her face. “Hey!”

“Come on,” Dina said. She lowered the phone so Ellie could see her pout. “Go back to looking all awestruck.”

Ellie bit down her complaints and shoved her hand obediently into her pocket. Something about Dina made it feel silly or futile to resist her. Maybe it was that look of delight that came when she got her way, lighting her face like the slow rise of the sun. Dina lifted the phone and captured the photo, Ellie probably looking lovestruck and foolish.

A fitting immortalization of their time together.

“Why do you even have that?” Ellie said, as Dina tucked the phone into her jeans pocket and stepped toward her.

“For photos, duh,” Dina said, but as she said it, she came right up beside Ellie and slid a hand down the soft inside of her elbow until she laced their hands together, and Ellie found she had nothing to say in reply.

Dina tugged her back into their path up the alley, and Ellie stumbled alongside her, relishing the warmth of their palms pressed together. The walkways were mostly empty, midmorning on a weekday.

At the end of the block, Dina squeezed Ellie’s hand and tugged her into a run, jaywalking across the street to the next alley. She laughed, and Ellie laughed with her, a little breathless.

“Do you hear that?” Dina said. Her expression turned focused, up the alley, the direction they were headed.

Ellie frowned and followed her gaze. The alley was empty as far as she could tell, but she could hear the faint tinny percussion of distant music, barely audible over the traffic noise of the city.

“Sounds like it’s this way,” Ellie offered, starting to walk again. “Come on.”

Dina skipped a step to catch up and let Ellie guide her faster past these paintings, until they reached an intersection with an alley running perpendicular. The noise was louder here, more clearly music, coming from the right.

“There,” Ellie said as she spun, and about midway down that direction, she could see someone painting one of the walls.

“Let’s check it out,” Dina said.

Ellie loosened her fingers a little, thinking Dina might not want to advertise— _this_ , in front of a stranger, but Dina didn’t release her.

“Oh,” Dina said as they approached, “I _love_ this song,” and this time she did release Ellie’s hand—so she could hold out her hands and lift her shoulders in tune with the beat.

Ellie tried to look unimpressed, but she felt a grin spread across her face. “Oh yeah?” she teased.

Dina frowned and grinned in challenge. “Yeah,” she said, committing more to her moves as she walked, skipping back a step when the bass dropped and doing a little spin.

“Aw, yes, ladies,” said the artist, now close enough to notice them.

At first, Ellie felt that natural paranoia creep over her, especially due to his word choice, but the man looked kind and unassuming. He wore a sweatshirt torn by design rather than age, and a thick plastic crescent clung to his gaged earlobe.

Ellie stuttered her steps for a moment, trying to catch the beat, but she felt self-conscious in front of a stranger. Two strangers. She masked it by turning her focus toward the wall. She strafed a bit away to get a better look and realized it was the face of a young boy. He had the same dark skin and tight curls as the man in front of them.

The artist resumed his work, holding a cardboard shape template and a can of spray paint to add another stripe of shading to the boy’s jaw. The wall drank in the paint eagerly, but on the cardboard, it beaded and dripped onto the man’s stained left hand.

“You like it?” he asked without looking.

Ellie rubbed her neck. Dina sidled up next to her, now looking at the painting for the first time. “You’re really talented. He looks familiar.”

“He was in the news a lot, when he got killed.” The man set his template and paint down and moved back until he stood at their distance from the wall.

“Sam, right?” Dina spoke up. “What was that, like, four years ago?”

The man crossed his arms. “Yup. He’d be seventeen this year. Other people forget, but… well. I’m his brother.”

Ellie turned to look at him, feeling the familiar shape of sadness settle on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, with as much as she could muster.

He met her gaze evenly and seemed to consider her. He freed his cleaner right hand from his crossed arms and leaned in to offer it to her. “Henry.”

“El—,” Ellie started and stopped herself, unsure if she should offer her name to a stranger, the danger of David leaping up in her mind like a specter.

“Elle,” Henry repeated incorrectly. He let go of her hand and held it to Dina.

Dina shook his hand too, sparing one casual glance at Ellie. “Dina.”

He nodded and retreated, refolding his arms, eyeing his work.

“It’s a great portrait,” Dina offered. “Crazy you can do that with spray paint.”

“All it takes is practice,” Henry said with a humble shrug.

Ellie noticed her hands twisting in front of her and shoved them into her jeans pockets. “Mind if we watch for a bit?” she said.

“Not at all.” Henry clapped his hands and stepped back up to the wall.

Ellie watched the graceful arcs of his arm for a moment, until Dina bumped their arms together. Ellie turned and Dina quirked a smile at her, then jolted her shoulders up and down to the beat of the new song.

Ellie laughed. “You are such a dork.”

“Takes one to know one,” Dina said, shimmying chastely up against her.

Ellie shook her head and tried to hide her smile. To Henry, she said, “Hey, um, Henry, do you know anyplace good to grab food around here? Not crazy expensive?”

“Yeah,” he said, pausing to point down the alley, “down that way on the far corner there’s a little food court with some good stuff. You should check it out.”

“Thanks.” She grabbed for Dina’s hand and tugged her toward where he’d pointed. “Come on.”

Dina pinned her with a knowing glare and smile. “You too chicken to dance with me?”

Ellie smiled at her. “You already like me. Why risk it?”

“Oh?” Dina said, falling into step beside her, “I like you now?”

Ellie fought a blush. “You literally told me you did,” she said, even though inside she immediately started to question it.

“I guess I did,” Dina allowed.

Ellie felt her anxiety deflate like a leaking balloon.

Dina didn’t notice. “You’re alright, I guess,” she continued, teasing. She bumped their elbows together and tightened her fingers where they laced through Ellie’s.

Ellie bit her lips into her mouth. “Yeah, you’re alright, too.”

\--

If it weren’t for the tables outside, they would have walked right past the central market.

“You think this is it?” Ellie asked, a little skeptical, craning her neck to inspect the unassuming letters painted onto the old warehouse brick.

“Just following my nose,” Dina said. She paused amiably at Ellie’s side while she looked.

“Looks like an old warehouse or something.” Ellie turned her head to Dina to indicate she was ready.

Dina fell back into the trickle of people heading inside; her arm pulled Ellie’s where their hands stayed linked together. Inside, the space yawned open with high ceilings, industrial fixtures, and a sea of bistro tables punctuated at the edges by small branded vendors.

As they came up to the nearest vendor, Dina dropped Ellie’s hand to lean against the display window, eyeing the array of picture-perfect pastries.

“These little cakes are so cute,” she said, her smile earnest and infectious.

Ellie bit her lip, unable to resist the urge to reward that smile. “You want one?” The cakes were expensive for what they were, but Ellie drifted toward the wallet in her back pocket anyway.

“Oh, no,” Dina said, standing up straight. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. They’re just so cute to look at, don’t you think?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Dina smiled and took her hand again. She led her from one vendor to the next, noting the options she liked, politely demurring at the options she didn’t.

“You sure you don’t want to just order this?” Ellie teased her, having asked the same at each stall Dina liked.

“I want to see them all first,” Dina repeated, and then she caught Ellie’s sly smile. She grinned and punched her shoulder. “You’re such a jerk.”

At the last stall, as Dina squinted at the menu board, Ellie absently scanned the crowd around them and noticed an Asian girl with dark hair heading toward them.

At first, it seemed like she was aiming for the vendor rather than them specifically, and it took until it was too late before Ellie realized her goal. Ellie had just opened her mouth and said “Dina—” and Dina turned toward her, away from the menu and from the girl, when the girl tapped Dina on the shoulder and showed an easy, almost sleepy smile.

“I thought that might be you,” the girl said.

Ellie couldn’t see Dina’s face, but she felt Dina stiffen and drop her hand.

“Jessie,” Dina said.

\--

“When were you gonna tell me you were in town?”

“I—”

“Come here,” Jessie said, pulling Dina into a hug right there, in the lazy swirl of the early lunch crowd. Ellie bit her lip and looked away from the girl’s closed eyes and tidy parted hair. “I never thought I’d see you again,” Jessie said quietly.

It was only for Dina’s ears, but Ellie could hear it, standing close as they were. Her ears burned and she feigned interest in the menu board.

When they separated, Dina turned out to loop Ellie into the conversation, sending Ellie a single glance too brief to interpret. “Um, Jessie, this is my friend Ellie. Ellie, this is Jessie. Um, we knew each other in high school.”

As if Ellie didn’t know.

Jessie gave Ellie an easy, genuine smile and offered a little wave. “Hey, Ellie.”

“Um, hi.” Ellie shook her hand, but her eyes jumped from Jessie to Dina to the worker at the till. Should she leave?

Jessie turned her attention back to Dina, and Ellie couldn’t help but notice how her face warmed and brightened. “How long are you in town? What are you doing here?”

“We’re just here today,” Dina said with unnerving ease. She didn’t even glance at Ellie this time.

“Wow, good timing. I leave tomorrow to head back.”

Dina’s expression clouded. “Back? You don’t live here anymore?”

Jessie looked at her with mild confusion. “Back to school. Are you not on spring break?”

For the first time, Dina seemed to falter. Even though Jessie’s appearance had tilted their uneasy balance and pitched their relationship into further uncertainty, Ellie felt compelled to throw Dina a line.

“Where do you go to school?” Ellie asked with her best politesse.

“UC-Boulder,” Jessie answered happily. “You aren’t on break? What’re you guys doing in Colorado?”

Ellie checked Dina’s face and saw, to her surprise, the telltale lines of fear.

Ellie didn’t feel afraid, exactly, but it did feel strange, bumping into this vision of a past life, a past vision of her own future. Joel had wanted her to go to community college and try to transfer when they’d saved up more money. She would have started already by now, if she’d stayed, if David hadn’t gotten out.

After months on the road, after these days exploring in social isolation with Dina, it felt like they had accidentally broken the surface and realized they had been underwater the whole time.

“We work together,” Ellie said, the lie slipping out of her like a breath held too long. She smirked a little, as if delivering an inside joke: “But Dina really needed a vacation, so I kind of absconded with her.”

Dina looked at Ellie with— _something_ , some deep feeling in her eyes, unrecognizable, indecipherable. It melted into naked relief, and then she quickly covered it with a pointed roll of the eyes. “She didn’t even say where we were going.”

“I didn’t know you knew anyone in Colorado,” Ellie added.

Jessie’s attention remained fixed on Dina. “What a happy coincidence,” she said, looking for all the world like she really was happy, like she had no reservations or dislike, stumbling across Dina with some other girl. Jessie asked Dina, “Where do you work? Are you still in Dexter?”

Given what Dina had said about Jessie, Ellie wondered if the mention of Dexter was a threat of judgment.

Maybe Dina interpreted it the same way, because she shook her head firmly. “Not Dexter. Down in Las Cruces. Ellie just likes road trips.”

“Well, we should catch up,” Jessie said, and at first Ellie thought she was saying it in the general, noncommittal way people said _we should get coffee sometime_.

But Jessie pointed at the tables.

“You getting lunch? I was gonna grab a sandwich over there if you want to meet me after you get”—she looked at the vendor stall—“whatever you want.”

Ellie wanted more than anything on Earth or heaven to turn her down, but Dina smiled and said, “Sure.”

“Great!” Jessie beamed at them. “I’m gonna go grab food and ditch my parents. Meet you in a minute!”

\--

Some part of Ellie wanted Jessie to flounce away, wanted her to in fact be frivolous and forgettable, but she moved through the crowd with the same solid confidence she’d worn confronting her ex in a crowded food court.

Dina ran a hand over her hair and down her ponytail. “What do you want to eat?” she said, only the faintest tremor evident in her voice.

Ellie gulped against her dry throat. “Do you want me to go?”

Dina looked at her like she’d grown an extra head. “Of course. We can all eat together.”

“That’s your ex,” Ellie said, feeling stupid, sounding stupid.

Dina looked away again, at the menu and the counter. “So?”

“Dina…”

“What?” Dina looked at her cleanly this time, her voice and expression preternaturally calm.

Ellie worked her jaw, struggling to put to words all the ways this situation was awkward and strange. “You told your ex that we’re friends,” she said.

Dina stared at her, betraying nothing. “Aren’t we friends?”

Ellie stared. Any confidence or security Dina had buoyed that morning was lagging now, dragging heavy in the waves, gasping for air.

“Well. Yes. But…”

They both startled when Jessie appeared beside them again, one hand curling around Dina’s shoulder with familiar intimacy. “Hey. Sorry. I’m gonna grab a table. Come find me?”

“Yeah,” Dina said, “will do.”

Jessie disappeared, but she left behind a paranoia, a feeling she would reappear at any moment.

Ellie worried her fingers together and watched Jessie recede again into the crowd. “What’s our story, then? I don’t… know what lies to tell.”

Dina shrugged, awkward and uncertain, belying her cool exterior. “Fuck, I don’t know, Ellie. I just… I lost her. I can’t just—leave.”

Ellie swallowed, but she nodded. “Right. Right.”

“Not like that,” Dina said, perhaps seeing Ellie mapping a route out of the building and back to the truck alone. Ellie looked down when Dina grabbed her hand.

Dina ducked her head to force their eyes to meet. “Me and Jessie are over. We were over a long time ago. I just… I just want to know, okay?”

“Know what?”

Dina shrugged helplessly. “Her fucking—life, after me. If she likes school. If she’s happy. Whatever.”

“Okay,” Ellie sighed and looked at the board, “okay. So we’re _friends_. Work friends. From Las Cruces.”

“Ellie—”

“We both work in a shop? What’s the story?”

Dina stilled. “Sure,” she said, biting her lip. “That’s easier.”

Ellie nodded and avoided Dina’s eyes. “Come on. Let’s order food.”

\--

Dina hesitated in the aisle, and Ellie couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I know you want the lobster roll,” she said. “You didn’t hide it well.”

Dina looked almost embarrassed. “They’re too expensive. And I don’t even know if I’ll like it. What if we splurge on one and it’s gross?”

“Then I’ll eat it,” Ellie said. She wanted to roll her eyes again, but she found herself smiling instead. “I grew up in Boston. Lobster’s in my blood.”

Her smile reflected on Dina’s face, small and a little shy. “Won’t you be offended by me, like, eating one of your people, then?”

This time Ellie did roll her eyes. “Shut up.” Before Dina could respond, she took off toward the vendor stall to place the order. Dina caught up as the cashier took Ellie’s cash.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dina said when the cashier had turned his back to make their meals. Her cheeks were a little rosy. Was she blushing?

“What are _friends_ for?” Ellie said. It came out harsher than she intended.

Dina bit her lip. “Ellie…”

The cashier returned with a tray. Ellie thanked him and took it. She braced herself and turned her eyes to the swarm of tables, only half full this early in the day. “Do you see her anywhere?”

“Yeah,” Dina said, almost too quickly, like she still felt that invisible thread that connects some people like a tangible force. Like it still pulled her toward Jessie, instead of Ellie.

Dina pointed, ducked her head, and began to pick her way through the chairs.


	11. Reunion

Jessie looked up with that natural, open smile and put her phone away. Dina took the seat beside her at the small table so Ellie awkwardly sat across from her, at Dina’s left side. She rotated the tray so the lobster roll sat in front of Dina and the po’ boy sat in front of her. Jessie had a sandwich, too, but the traditional square kind instead of the roll style they’d ordered.

“Are your parents not here?” Dina asked, glancing over Jessie’s shoulders.

Jessie waved a hand dismissively. “I sent them off to check out a store Mom looked interested in. Told them I wanted a minute to myself.” She grinned. “I knew otherwise they’d totally monopolize you.”

Dina snorted, but didn’t answer.

“They still ask about you,” Jessie said, her expression turning more serious. “But I haven’t had any updates to offer in… years. You kind of dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“Yeah.” Dina rubbed her nose, eyes aimed at her plate, and made a production of balancing her roll in her hands so the filling wouldn’t fall out when she took a bite.

Jessie watched her knowingly. “I even checked a few times to make sure you didn’t, like, block me or something. But you just haven’t posted anything.”

Dina chewed and shrugged. When she swallowed, she said, “I guess I just lost interest. It _has_ been a few years. What about you?” she asked, all smooth, before Jessie could follow up. “You’re in school? What’re you studying?”

“Environmental engineering.” Jessie carefully tucked the wax paper down off the top side of her sandwich. “What do you do? How long have you been in Las Cruces?”

Ellie started in on her po’ boy. She felt Dina’s eyes cut to her, but she didn’t look up.

“Um, I’m a mechanic,” Dina said, the words tinged with embarrassment. “We work in a shop down there. The money’s not bad.”

“That’s so cool,” Jessie said, so earnestly that Ellie wondered why Dina felt embarrassed to begin with. Jessie smiled. “You were always taking things apart and putting them back together. That sounds perfect for you.”

“Yeah.”

Jessie seemed to recognize Dina’s discomfort, because she changed the subject. “Talia must have lost her shit when you moved so far away. Does she come down and visit much?”

At that, Dina visibly froze over. “No,” she said, lifting her roll for another big bite, “I haven’t seen her since I left.”

That didn’t seem to surprise Jessie much. She nodded and chewed thoughtfully. “She was always kind of intense. You two finally have it out?”

Dina shrugged and took another bite instead of responding.

Ellie cleared her throat. “So you two, what, grew up together?”

If Dina was going to drag her into this, she could at least gather a little more information about Dina and even the score.

Dina glanced at her in warning, but Ellie looked pointedly at Jessie with a polite smile.

“Yeah, kind of,” Jessie said, smiling like she was happy to be telling their story to someone. “Dina moved to Dexter when she was… what were you, like 12 or 13?”

Dina chewed morosely.

Jessie smirked. “We were in the same homeroom and kind of attached at the hip. We were, like, inseparable, until my family moved.”

Ellie looked between them. “And you haven’t talked since?”

“Oh, no,” Jessie said. “We talked online for a while after.”

Shaking her head, Dina swallowed and added, “We used to text, like, all the time. Then Jessie got too busy and cool and shit at her new school or whatever—”

“—Shut up, that is not true—”

“—and I got busy too and kind of stopped posting.”

“I never thought you’d get too busy to spam selfies,” Jessie teased.

Ellie failed to mask her interest. Her eyes slid to Dina. “Oh yeah?”

Jessie grinned and pulled a phone from her purse. She tapped the screen a few times and offered it to Ellie, under Dina’s mistrustful watch.

Ellie took the phone, carefully placing her thumb over the front-facing cameras, and found herself looking at rows and rows of photo squares featuring a smiling young Dina front and center.

“Is this really necessary?” Dina asked Jessie drily.

“Yes,” Ellie said at the same time Jessie did. She looked up and found Jessie grinning at her.

“She was always so good at all that photo editing stuff,” Jessie added while Ellie scrolled. “If you told me she was a professional photographer now, I’d believe you.”

“No shit,” Ellie said softly, thinking of Dina taking her photo with the mural wall, and dragging her to the sign outside Roswell. At the top, the photos on the screen had mostly been just Dina, or Dina and a boy, but now Ellie was far enough to see Jessie sprinkled in as well.

“You’re so fucking full of it,” Dina said to Jessie. She shook her head and took another bite of her roll.

Jessie laughed. “I mean it, and you know it. You’re really talented.”

Dina popped a chip in her mouth. “Don’t flatter me.”

“Hard not to,” Jessie said, her eyes sparkling.

In that moment, Ellie’s thumb bumped one of the photos, and both in real life and in miniature, she watched Dina sharing an intimate, earnest moment with Jessie, the two of them smiling and joyous in a way Ellie was sure she would never be again.

Ellie cleared her throat to break the spell and set the phone back in front of Jessie. “They really are good,” she said quietly, not really aimed at either of them. She felt like a ghost, observing them without affecting them.

“So, tell me about school,” Dina said, in this demure way, like they were on a date and Ellie really truly wasn’t even there.

Ellie shoveled in the last bite of her sandwich, pointed vaguely at the bathrooms, and left the table.

\--

She followed a narrow hallway down past the main bathrooms to a single-room family stall and locked the door behind her. She leaned against the door, feeling restless, but aimless.

The tiled floor was worn, but clean. Someone had left the diaper changing table unlatched and open. Ellie crossed the room and slowly pushed it back into place, her fingers lingering on the smooth plastic.

How long should she wait?

She wasn’t even sure what she was waiting for. Did she expect to hit Fast Forward and skip their reunion, then walk out arm in arm with Dina like nothing had happened?

Was she waiting for them to leave together, without her?

She lingered at the sink, washing her hands slowly, thoroughly, watching her own sullen face in the mirror. There weren’t bags under her eyes, but she thought she recognized the gradual strain of stress, the accumulation of extra gravity over many months and years. Her eyes looked tired. Her skin looked sallow.

She touched her jaw and turned, watching the way the fluorescent light caught the ridges and wrinkles of her face.

Then, shaking her head, she slipped back into the soothing routine of muscle memory, tugging off her shirt and taking a paper towel bird bath with hand soap and sink water.

Any port in a storm.

\--

After another few minutes of stalling, Ellie decided not to invite any polite inquiries after her gastrointestinal health and steeled herself to return to the table. She took a circuitous route, hoping one of them would notice her approach and spare her any overly intimate details, but she wasn’t that lucky.

Jessie had her chin propped on her hand and her elbow on the table, leaning fully halfway across the distance between them, watching Dina in rapt attention as she spoke. Dina, for her part, looked happy, maybe happier than Ellie had ever seen her: her smile less sharp; her eyes soft, serene.

“… would have saved us some time,” Dina was saying.

“I was nervous,” Jessie said with a laugh. “You were pretty. I liked you. What if you didn’t even want to be friends, after?”

Ellie felt her heart beating louder. She didn’t want to hear this.

“You are such a chickenshit.”

“Hey, I was just trying to be smart about it.”

Ellie was close now. Too close. Her knuckles brushed the back of her chair.

Jessie, facing her, looked up. Dina looked up too, a beat too late.

Ellie swallowed.

“I just remembered,” she found herself saying, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder, “I have to go feed the meter. You guys, uh… well, you know where to find me.”

She tried to meet Dina’s eyes, intended to, but she didn’t get that far before her feet turned her and took her out of the market, so fast she didn’t even have time to look back.

\--

Ellie sat in the truck a long, long time. A really fucking long time. Way too long.

Eventually, she couldn’t take the waiting and the stillness and she went and dug out her journal. When she flipped to the last marked page, she realized she hadn’t written a word since she met Dina. She’d kept the journal, and its secrets, carefully hidden.

Her pen hovered a long time over the page, like she was really so out of practice, but when she started writing she couldn’t stop. Her thoughts ran into one another like soap suds foaming under a faucet. She filled a whole page, edge to edge, writing over and past the margins, her writing smaller and tighter as she went.

\--

The truck door opened suddenly and she almost yelled in surprise.

But it was just Dina.

Dina, looking at her like she’d just stopped in a gas station for a pit stop and come right back out. Like nothing was different.

Dina glanced at the journal, still clutched in Ellie’s hands, and a small smile played on her lips, like she was getting ready to tease Ellie, or say something smug or snide.

Ellie opened her mouth; shut it; then found her voice.

“What the everloving fuck, Dina?”

Dina blinked in surprise. “What?”

Ellie shut the journal and chucked it on the dash. “What the fuck was that?”

Dina shifted forward in her seat, like she was getting ready to run.

They stared at each other for a short, sharp moment.

Ellie looked aside, sat back, and rubbed her nose.

“What do you mean?” Dina asked, her voice shaking just slightly.

After dumping all her thoughts out on the page, they felt jumbled together. Ellie struggled to pick out just one thing.

“Just what the fuck are we to each other?” she settled on. She looked out the window, afraid to see Dina’s expression. “You told that girl we were friends. But we’re— _fuck_. We’re _not_. I mean—right?”

“I know,” Dina said. “I’m sorry.”

Ellie ran a hand through her hair. Her eyes were glued to a fingerprint smudge on the bottom edge of the windshield.

She’d been afraid to ask, this whole time. Afraid forcing an answer would mean getting the answer she didn’t want. But, now, it felt impossible to wait any longer.

“What do you want from me?” Her voice wavered. She looked down at her hands, twisted together in her lap. “Am I just a ride? … And a _ride_?” She laughed bitterly.

“No,” Dina said, an immediate response. She shifted closer, leaning against the center console. “No, you’re not. I just… I was thrown, okay? I never thought we’d run into Jessie here. In this huge fucking city. What are the odds?”

Ellie shrugged. That wasn’t the point.

Dina sighed and fidgeted in Ellie’s peripheral vision. “Listen, I mean, I don’t really know what we are, you know? I mean, did you want me to introduce you as my girlfriend? We met like four days ago, El.”

“You were happy to lie about everything else,” Ellie pointed out, although she knew Dina was right.

“Come on. That’s not fair.” Dina sighed louder and sat back against the door and gestured at the back of the truck. “You wanted me to tell her that I’m—that we’re—”

“—No—”

“—while she’s fucking living her fucking dreams, going to college, and what the fuck ever?”

“No, I just…”

“What would you have done?” Dina looked at her fiercely. “If it was your ex we bumped into?”

“I don’t have any fucking exes,” Ellie shot back.

Dina frowned. “Don’t _you_ lie to me, now.”

“I’m serious. I’ve never—” She let out a short, frustrated breath. “Nothing ever lasted this long.”

The admission stung. She felt her cheeks heating; she sensed Dina processing that, that Ellie had never kept anyone happy as long as _four days_.

Dina cleared her throat. Ellie snuck a glance at her and Dina seemed calm now; serious.

“I’m sorry,” Dina said. “I… I’m sorry, okay?”

Ellie rubbed her neck, her eyes on her lap. When her hand dropped, her gaze caught on the thorns along her arm.

“Why did you even come back?” she asked despite herself. “Why not just go and—”

She couldn’t bring Jessie’s name out of herself, so she waved a hand at the window and swallowed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dina said, her voice a cutting edge. “I don’t want her to know that I—that I’m—”

Ellie felt her face twist into a glare. “That you’re what?”

“That I’m on the fucking run,” Dina said in a rush. Her cheeks were rosy, in anger, or embarrassment. “That I’m exactly the kind of fuck-up she never wanted to be. That I barely even got out of Dexter, and when I did it was someplace even worse, someplace even smaller and— _worse_.”

Ellie took a deep breath and held it to calm herself. “You’re on the run?” she asked, confused.

Dina’s eyes cut to the windshield, to the car parked in front of them. She didn’t answer, so Ellie waited.

Eventually, Dina let out an audible, ragged breath and leaned her arm on the window, still gazing out into the middle distance. “I didn’t leave because of Jessie,” she said, tugging the thread they’d left at the red rocks, when she’d shut down and withdrawn. “After Jessie left, I started dating this guy who—who I thought was a good person, but when I ended up pregnant—”

She cut off and laughed humorlessly, painfully. Ellie’s mouth went dry. Dina—pregnant? Did she have a kid? Did she have a—

“Well, he kind of bailed on me, and when I went to Tal, she… well.”

Ellie swallowed. “Did you…”

“I _wanted_ to,” Dina said. “But you have to go to Albuquerque to do it, and Talia would’ve had to sign for it, and she—wouldn’t.”

Dina covered her mouth with her hand and turned fully away, out the passenger window. A woman walked past with earbuds in, dancing to unheard music. Against her palm, Dina said, “So I found someone else who would do it.”

“Fuck,” Ellie said softly. She reached out and touched Dina’s shoulder. Dina didn’t soften, but she didn’t pull away.

Dina rubbed her nose and faced forward again, her eyes skipping warily along the dash and console. “Anyway, um, she got raided and they confiscated her records, so…”

“So they might have your name,” Ellie realized aloud. That meant there might be a warrant out for her. Not to mention whatever Talia apparently would’ve thought.

Dina offered her a pained smile. “Yep.”

They locked eyes for a long, quiet moment, until Ellie felt her hand starting to shake. She looked aside and retreated to her side of the cab, scratching her tattoo absently.

Another long moment later, Dina cleared her throat. “I, um, never told anybody that before.”

Ellie pinched the skin at the center of the rose. She tried for a faint smile. “Not even Eugene? It sounded like you told each other, like, everything.”

Dina snorted. A smile cracked her solemn mask. “Ha, ha.”

They sat in silence again, but it felt a little easier—a little more even.

“I really like you, Ellie.”

Ellie squeezed her index finger and glanced over at Dina. Dina gazed at her tentatively, openly. The sun caught the lighter notes of her eyes, painting them a honeyed brown, soft and sweet.

“I really like you, too,” Ellie said.

Dina pulled one knee up and hugged it. “I didn’t want to scare you away by being… clingy, or whatever. I know I’m already asking a lot of you. What if I introduced you—that way, and it spooked you?”

Ellie blinked and considered that. “What do you mean?”

“Just… that,” Dina said, glancing away and back again. “I don’t hold all the cards here, Ellie. I don’t really know what you’re thinking, either.”

Ellie scratched her neck and then her tattoo again, leaving a red mark parallel to one thorny black branch. “Well… do you know, now?”

Dina peered at her thoughtfully. “I think so.”

Ellie nodded. “Good.”

Dina smiled a little. She started slow, then built a sing-song: “You think I’m gooorgeous… you want to kiss me… hug me and maaarry me…”

“Okay, okay,” Ellie said with a laugh, waving Dina off.

Dina picked at the rip in the knee of her jeans. “Sorry I didn’t tell you before. About… That I’m hiding, too. I just figured…”

“It’s fine,” Ellie said, and shrugged. “I mean, I already told you I was laying low. It’s not like I would’ve done anything different.”

“Yeah, but you might’ve been in for a surprise if you did get pulled over.”

Ellie shrugged again. “At least I don’t feel as guilty, now. I… kind of feel shitty, putting you in danger for coming with me.”

“Please. I’d happily risk a little violent excitement to get the fuck out of that place.”

“You say that now…”

Dina smiled. “So, do you want to walk around some more? Or should we go?”

Ellie glanced in the side mirror. “I think I’d rather leave. I’ve… had enough surprises for one day.”

Dina laughed. “You say that now…”

Ellie laughed, too, and started the truck.


	12. You, Me, and Us

As she merged back onto the highway, Ellie glanced at Dina and asked, “Should I pick up I-25 again, or do we need to cut off of it to pass the border?”

Dina already had the atlas open in her lap, and she tapped her finger on it for emphasis. “I-25 is fine. We’ll take that to Loveland or Fort Collins and exit there. Which is good, since you didn’t think to ask ‘til we were already back on 25.”

“We aren’t that far north yet,” Ellie said with a smile. “There would’ve been time to turn around.”

Traffic began to smooth out, and Dina settled back in her seat with her feet up on the dash, the atlas cradled in her lap. After a while, she set it flat and aimed her gaze out the window, at the dwindling marks of the city on the otherwise open green fields.

“Sorry if I was a dick earlier,” Dina offered. “I didn’t mean to make you feel, like, left out. I couldn’t figure out the best way to handle it.”

Ellie rubbed her thumb on the worn steering wheel. “It’s okay. It… must’ve been weird, for you.”

Dina kept her face turned away. “Yeah. I never thought I’d see her again.”

“You cut all contact, when you ran away?” Ellie asked, thinking back to the night she left, when she turned her phone off for the last time. She’d kept it with her—unable to part with its trove of photos and memories, and reasoning that someday she’d pop the SIM and use it offline—although she hadn’t worked up the nerve to use it since then, herself.

“I sold my phone, anyway, and for a guy who likes electronics, Eugene is deeply and seriously anti-computer.” Dina shrugged. “It didn’t seem wise to post shit on social anyway, considering. You know. Trying to lay low.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Ellie said quickly. “I didn’t exactly post a big _farewell, world_ thing on mine, either.”

Dina looked at her. “Do you think we still would’ve gotten together, if we met… earlier? Some other way?”

Ellie slid her eyes over. “I dunno. Have we _gotten together_ , now?”

“I kind of thought you said we did.”

“I said you should’ve said so to your ex,” Ellie corrected. “I mean, you should always talk yourself up, to an ex, right?”

Dina sat up and tried to hide a sly smile. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“You didn’t ask a question,” Ellie said. “I did.”

“Not that one.” Dina waved her off. “I mean like… I was thinking about, like, before, when our lives were normal and we were still part of that, like… normal world of posting photos and relationship status updates and shit.”

Ellie scratched her neck and looked down at her arm, at the black rose and its thorned, snaking vines. “Were we ever normal?” she asked. “I don’t think I was normal… at least, not for long.”

“You know what I mean.” Dina shrugged, and Ellie was struck by how easily Dina seemed to carry her burdens, heavy as they must have been. “I had, like, some normal high school. It sounds like you did, too.”

Ellie shrugged. “I guess it’s hard to say,” she said, winding back the clock to her high school days in Austin. She tried to imagine Dina that young. “I wasn’t that friendly.”

Dina turned to her, and she glanced over and saw a knowing smile on Dina’s face, her eyes narrowed in curiosity. “I was,” Dina said.

Ellie smiled back, feeling strangely nervous, as if she was a gawky teenager again and Dina was staring her down in the cafeteria, heading for her with a lunch tray.

“Were you one of those quiet, introverted art kids?” Dina guessed, a little too correctly.

Ellie shifted her shoulder in a defensive shrug. “Maybe. How’d you know?”

Dina nodded at the journal, still shunted up against the windshield where Ellie had tossed it. “The journal, the huge art piece tattoo…”

“Alright, smartass,” Ellie cut her off.

“It is a nice tattoo,” Dina said.

She sounded too casual—almost calculated. Ellie bit the inside of her cheek.

“How the fuck did you afford a piece that big?”

Ellie released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. “Uh, I worked summers, with my dad.”

“Really? Doing what?”

“Construction.” Ellie switched hands and gestured. “Hence the truck. I got his old one when he upgraded.”

“Ohh,” Dina said, “so you’re who put that frame and dresser and stuff in.”

“Yeah…” Ellie shrugged and merged into the middle lane. “The night I left, I just drove until I was too tired, and then I crashed in the cab. I knew I couldn’t do that for long, though.”

Dina glanced at the rear window, although the view to the truck bed was blacked out on this side too. “You have a pretty decent setup, considering.”

“Thanks. Still wouldn’t mind a bathroom.”

Dina clicked her tongue. “Give yourself a little credit. You did all that shit yourself in, what, like a Home Depot parking lot with like fifty bucks?”

Ellie laughed. “Something like that.”

“Pretty impressive. Hey, between the two of us, we’re in good shape then, huh?”

Ellie glanced at her. “Huh?”

Dina grinned. “I can fix the truck, and you can fix the—rest. What do you call it? I feel like we should give it, like, a nickname. Like we just call it _the apartment_.”

At that, Ellie laughed louder. “No, no, something snootier, like _the loft_.”

“Fuck yeah. That’s funny. Oh, shit—” Dina sat forward and pointed at an exit sign. “Fort Collins. Get off here.”

Ellie accelerated to sneak into the right lane in front of a semi, then peeled into the exit lane. Dina directed her east along a county highway, following along in the atlas, and then onto a state highway heading north parallel to the interstate.

“Anyway,” Dina said once they were on the right road, “like I was saying, I bet I could’ve cracked you.”

Ellie snorted. “What am I, an egg?”

“Whatever.”

“I dunno,” Ellie said, feigning deep thought, “weren’t you hung up on Jessie at the time?”

Dina punched her shoulder and Ellie laughed. “Jessie moved at the end of freshman year,” Dina said. “Plenty of time.”

“You can be hung up on somebody after they’re gone,” Ellie reasoned, thinking of Jessie back at lunch, thinking of Riley after—everything.

“Maybe you would’ve been a good rebound,” Dina said back, teasing her.

Ellie laughed. “Aren’t rebounds supposed to be, like, short, fun flings?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Trust me, high school Ellie was the opposite of fun.”

“Oh yeah?” Dina peered at her, her eyes a little sharp. “You were already all depressed and emo?”

Ellie rolled her eyes, but she felt herself blush. “I mean, _maybe_. I had kind of a rough lead-up to high school.”

Dina considered her for a moment. Instead of downplaying it or trying to joke her way out of it, she just said, “I bet I could’ve gotten past that. I was very charming.”

Ellie smiled. “Oh, were you? What changed?”

Dina laughed. “Fuck you!”

“No,” Ellie pretended to think aloud, “no, I don’t think that’s it. I feel like I would remember it, if you were charming when we met. It must’ve happened way before me.”

“You are such a dick,” Dina said.

Ellie chuckled. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a big brown building coming up on the left on the horizon, where cars on I-25 raced them north. A few cars had stacked up in a line as they waited to get through the checkpoint.

Ellie flipped the sun visor down and pulled it over, between her and the window.

\--

In Cheyenne, Dina led Ellie back to I-25 to rejoin the main traffic artery. “We take this all the way to Casper,” Dina said, reading off the atlas. “Then we break off to head west toward Yellowstone.”

“You’re a natural with that thing,” Ellie said.

“Thanks.” Dina smiled tentatively.

Ellie met her with a smile of her own. “Seriously. I’m glad you’re here to help. Doing it alone sucked.”

Dina snorted. “It must’ve, if you ended up where I was at.”

“Well.” Ellie bit her lip. “That part didn’t suck that much.”

“Hmm,” Dina hummed in agreement. She toed her boots off and propped her feet up on the dashboard. “I’m really excited to see Yellowstone.”

“Me too,” Ellie said. She snuck a glance at Dina and tried to picture her in front of the waterfall in her guidebook. Tried to see her face lit up with joy.

Ellie rubbed her chin. “I forgot to ask,” she said. “What did you think of that lobster roll?”

“Oh, _incredible_ ,” Dina said immediately. “Totally worth it. Um, thank you.”

“I wasn’t fishing,” Ellie said in apology. “Just tracking things you like.”

Dina smirked. “Oh yeah?”

Ellie bit her lip and shrugged.

“Wow, you must really like me,” Dina teased her.

“Shut up.”

“Anyway,” Dina said, turning her attention back to the map, “I don’t think we’ll make it there today. Looks like Wyoming is pretty big, and we only just started going across it.”

“That’s fine.” Ellie stretched her legs awkwardly around the pedals. “We can stop and make dinner and squat somewhere tonight. Not like we’ll be doing any different in Yellowstone.”

“You know… this has actually been kinda fun, so far,” Dina said.

Ellie glanced at her. “You sound disappointed.”

“No, just surprised. I guess I didn’t really know… what to expect.”

Ellie let out a breathy laugh of relief. “Me neither.”

Dina looked at her, curious. “You didn’t do this stuff all winter?”

“Fuck no.” Ellie shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, I was aimless for a while and just kind of trying to hide. And I was trying to set up the truck to be more livable. Then I was just trying to figure out, like, where it’s safe to try and sleep, and how to stretch a dollar… I… honestly, it never occurred to me to stop and look at anything, until… you.”

When she snuck another look, Dina seemed thoughtful, not judgmental.

“I understand,” Dina said after a moment. “When you’re just trying to survive, it’s hard to see anything else.”

It was strange to hear it put so plainly, how much meeting Dina had flipped a switch.

“Sorry if I made you feel weird earlier,” Ellie blurted. “You didn’t have to tell Jessie anything about us. We’re not—fuck. I know we’re—”

“You didn’t make me feel weird,” Dina cut her off. “I said it’s okay. Relax.”

“Okay.”

Dina smiled, tentatively. “For what it’s worth, I feel like we are _together_ , you know? Even if I’m not sure what title that equals.”

Ellie looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “I guess that’s hard to deny,” she admitted, “since we, like, technically live together already.”

Dina laughed. “Talk about U-Haul, huh?”

Ellie laughed, too. “Yeah, maybe, if you didn’t even manage to move back out of the truck.”

\--

As the sun approached the western horizon, fading the sky from blue to burnt orange, Ellie slid into the exit lane and rolled up to a pump at a small gas station, its façade faded but clean, the pumps old but well-lit.

As soon as she stopped, Dina hopped out of the cab and headed for the building. Ellie waited for a cue, but Dina didn’t turn back toward her, so Ellie clambered out herself and hovered by the pump, her eyes flicking between the display and the glass doors. Sure enough, she heard a _click_ as the pump turned on with a credit, and through the doors she glimpsed Dina crossing from the counter toward the restrooms at the back.

Ellie opened the gas cap, punched the type selector, and stuffed the nozzle into the truck. Once she heard the throaty gurgle of fuel flowing through the hose, she put her hands in her pockets and headed inside.

As she closed the bathroom stall, she heard Dina exit another one, recognizable by her work boots shuffling past the stall door. When Ellie was done, wiping her wet hands on her jeans and shouldering the door open to reenter the shop, she spied Dina collecting a plastic bag from the counter with a smile.

They bumped into each other at the main door, Dina flashing her a secretive smile, Ellie narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

“Whatcha got there?” she asked.

Dina held her body between Ellie and the bag. “It’s a surprise. You fill up already?”

“Should be about done,” Ellie said. As if on cue, the nozzle made a _snap_ and shut off as they approached.

Ellie broke off to hang the nozzle back up and decline a receipt. “Thanks for getting that, by the way,” Ellie said as Dina arranged the shopping bag on the floor and climbed in.

Dina left the door hanging open and smiled at her. “No problem. You wanna try to park here overnight?”

Ellie came over and leaned on the open door. She scanned their surroundings. The setup wasn’t ideal, since there wasn’t a back parking lot or a secluded space to camp out in.

“How did the clerk seem, when you were in there?” she asked, weighing the risk of staying against the risk of not finding another good place. She noticed the glass eye of a security camera tucked under the eave in front of the door.

“Fine,” Dina shrugged, “normal.”

Ellie shifted her hands against the metal of the truck. Something told her not to stay here.

“I actually want to move on,” Ellie said, forcing herself to trust her instincts. “We passed a rest stop a while ago. Maybe there’s another one close.”

When she met Dina’s eyes, Dina was looking at her thoughtfully, seriously.

Ellie shifted. “I just—”

“Okay.” Dina smiled a little. “If you want, I can go ask about a rest stop.”

Ellie glanced at the glass doors, thinking of the cashier, a burly man in a trucker cap.

“Nah. Let’s just drive.”

\--

The sun had disappeared and headlights dotted the highway in the distance when Dina spotted a rest stop sign.

“It says three spaces left,” she read off the digital display in confusion. “Do we need to hurry?”

“Those are semi truck spaces,” Ellie explained. “There should be a lot of car spots still open.”

Sure enough, a whole row of semis filled the first aisle at the rest stop, but the back was open except for a big motorhome parked near the picnic tables. Ellie chose a space close to the bathrooms, but out of the illuminated pool under the streetlight.

She turned at the last minute so she could back up to face the view of the open plains. As soon as she killed the engine and the cab lights came on, Dina shot her a mischievous smile.

“I got us a present,” she said, lifting the shopping bag onto the seat.

Ellie hooked a finger on the rim and tugged it open to reveal a bottle of cheap vodka and a quart of blue Powerade. She raised an eyebrow at Dina.

“What?” she said, grinning. “Don’t tell me you _abstain_.”

“I don’t,” Ellie said. She had to laugh. “You trying to get in my pants or something?”

Dina laughed back. “Pft. Like I need vodka to get in your pants.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, grabbed the bag, and hopped out of the truck.

\--

Ellie clutched her side. She’d gotten a stitch already from laughing, and now Dina had her going again, so hard she could feel an ache under her ribs.

“Fuck you, too,” she gasped, swatting Dina’s hands away from the bottle.

Dina grinned and turned toward her. “Alright, your turn,” she said, leaning in.

“My turn again?” Ellie tried to remember whose turn it was last. “I just went.”

“No, _I_ just went,” Dina corrected, way too smoothly, “so it’s your turn.”

“Fuck.” Ellie shook her head and her vision swirled. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Dina’s eyes glittered in the darkness. They were sitting on top of the bed cap, dinner eaten and cleaned up already, the vodka and Powerade half gone. Dina had put on a sweatshirt against the chill, but Ellie felt warm, hot even, despite the coolness of the air.

“First kiss,” Dina announced decisively. “Tell me that story.”

Ellie felt her face scrunch up. All traces of laughter left her abruptly. “ _My_ first kiss?” she stalled.

Dina rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

Ellie stared at her, struggling, then let herself drift down flat against the metal, her face aimed at the stars. “Fuck.”

After a second, Dina appeared above her, maybe concerned, maybe annoyed. “Ellie?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said. She could feel a pull, like a strong current underneath her, like she hadn’t realized she’d strayed so far from shore until it was too late. She felt that tide dragging her down, dragging her into the memory in front of her, the way it used to go before Joel and Austin and therapy.

“Her name was Riley,” Ellie said. Saying her name out loud felt like a magic spell; she saw Riley before her, clearly, young as she ever was, her face so smooth and sharp and sweet. Riley hung over her, touching her face with uncharacteristic tenderness, her skin cool to the touch, her skin warm and brown against the black backdrop of the stars.

Suddenly she blinked and Riley was gone, and she felt hands urging under her back. “Ellie, you should sit up.”

Ellie struggled upright and recognized Dina beside her, Dina’s hands on her body, steadying her.

“Come on,” Dina was saying, “don’t go all emo on me, just tell me about the kiss part, huh?” And she was chiding, but she was doing it so gently—

Ellie lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “We were in the same group home, for a while, after Marlene,” Ellie said, unburying the words from within. It was hard, but she tried to focus on that one night, that one kiss. “We were best friends for, like, ever, and then they were going to move her or something, and the night before she was supposed to leave, we snuck out.”

Dina’s hand wandered to Ellie’s knee, and Ellie blinked at Dina, and she felt goosebumps raising along her skin, but no burning.

“Of course you did,” Dina said, and she smirked and shook her head a little, but she still sounded so gentle, her hands felt so gentle.

“We snuck out to a mall,” Ellie said. “We didn’t have any cash, but we were playing around in the arcade outside the movie theater, and somebody left their swipe card behind. So we stayed and played games ‘til the card ran out.”

Dina watched her closely. It felt like an anchor, or a line to shore, holding Ellie back against the undertow.

Ellie wet her lips. “Um, we left when they started closing shit down, on the way home it started raining, so we ducked into a doorway with an awning, and… I kissed her.”

She felt Dina’s fingers tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. Dina smiled and pressed the glass bottle into Ellie’s hand.

“You were a brave one, weren’t you?” Dina teased. “You get to drink, for that.”

Ellie took a bleary look at the vodka, then took a quick swig from it, and then another from the Powerade. She winced as she exhaled the mixed aftertaste.

“Wait,” she said after a second, “how come I had to drink if I answered?”

Dina’s grin turned wolfish. “Because I’m trying to get you drunk.”

“Why?” Ellie whined.

“I can’t believe you kissed _her_ , for your first kiss,” Dina said, shaking her head in disbelief. “What the fuck happened since then? You about ran for the hills when I made a pass at you.”

Ellie blinked hard. Dina’s hair blended in with the deep black sky. Her body formed a dark cutout in the blanket of stars surrounding them.

“Ellie?”

Ellie blinked again and shook her head to clear it. It only made things spin.

“She left, after,” Ellie mumbled. “And then she came back, for one night, and then she died.”

She felt Dina move closer, leaning toward her, listening somberly.

Ellie felt her heart twist. She saw a flash of Riley in the bathroom, slumped against the sink, blood oozing from her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it only made the image clearer.

Dina wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her into a hug.

“Okay, easy, tiger,” Dina soothed. She held Ellie’s head against her shoulder and ran a hand through her hair.

Ellie hiccupped. “Fuck,” she said against Dina’s sweatshirt. Her breath bounced back in her face and she grimaced at the smell. “Why’d you fucking make me cry,” she said, although when she wiped her eyes, her hand was dry.

“Here,” Dina said, sitting her upright again and lifting the bottle, “it’s my turn again, huh? Give me a good one.”

Ellie squinted at her, at her silhouette against the stars, at her gleaming eyes. “Why the fuck are you with me?”

Dina smiled, laughed, and shook her head. “That one’s too easy,” she said. She lifted the vodka and tipped it toward Ellie like a toast. “Because I fucking like you, moron.”


	13. Country Roads

“How, uh, how ya doin’ over there, champ?” Dina asked. Though tentative, her voice sounded loud and grating.

Ellie gritted her teeth and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. “Fucking awesome,” she mumbled. The throb in her head hadn’t subsided, even after an hour on the road and a full cup of repulsive gas station coffee.

“Coffee didn’t help?” Dina asked. She seemed to be walking the line between teasing and apologizing, since the vodka had been her idea in the first place.

“Not really. Now I just have a headache _and_ I really have to pee.”

Dina chuckled to herself and redirected her attention to the atlas, left open in her lap. She traced an idle finger across the page. “Think you can hold it ‘til that next marker? Or you wanna pull over?”

“Pull over? In this?” Ellie eyed the wide expanse of unsheltered scrub grass surrounding them on all sides. “Moon some strangers?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Dina said, not looking up. “You can just go in the back, in the emergency pee bottle you’ve been hiding from me.”

Ellie startled and looked at her, but Dina betrayed nothing, and Ellie couldn’t articulate why it felt so strange to hear Dina say it so matter-of-factly when they did, in fact, live together in the tiniest imaginable living quarters.

Ellie slouched in her seat and muttered, “I can wait.”

Although Dina had been sympathetic to Ellie’s hangover and sour mood, Ellie knew she wasn’t really the cause, so she was trying not to let any misdirected anger seep through. In truth, she’d had a series of upsetting dreams that left her feeling less rested than when she’d gone to bed, and on top of that her memories of their drunken heart-to-heart were hazy at best. She knew she was missing at least one significant puzzle piece, because her dreams had featured Riley much more than usual, while she didn’t remember talking about her at all.

For her part, Dina either handled her liquor much more readily, or she’d let Ellie drink the lion’s share of the bottle, because she seemed entirely herself so far. She’d even woken Ellie up with her usual half-asleep cuddling, which to Ellie’s overloaded senses had felt more oppressive than comforting.

Ellie cleared her throat and turned on the radio. After multiple minutes of fiddling with the tuner, finding only one crackly country station for her trouble, she punched it off again and sat back with a huff.

She tapped her thumbs on the dash and adjusted her glasses again with her shoulder. “So, um, how’s the route looking today?”

“Fine. We’re done crossing state borders. We’re just taking this ‘til we hit Casper, when we’ll leave 25 to keep going west.”

Ellie wasn’t sure why, since any noise sounded loud and harsh in her recovering ears, but she wanted Dina to keep talking. She wracked her aching head for something else to say, or ask.

Before she came up with anything, Dina commented, “I wish we had an actual Yellowstone map, or anything.”

Ellie felt herself relax, just a tiny bit. “Yeah? You think you can get us there without one?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dina said, “there’s only a few roads in, it looks like, and I’m sure there’ll be signs and shit. But it’d be nice to have one to look at so I could plan, since we’re stuck in the car all day anyway.”

“That’s true.” Ellie chewed her lip. “I’m actually not even sure what part of the park those waterfalls are in. I just know there are some. Or were some.”

“Pretty sure the waterfalls will still be there,” Dina said, with an audible smile.

Ellie glanced at her sidelong and fought off a smile in response. “I dunno. My dad’s pretty fuckin’ old.”

Dina laughed. “Like, world record old?”

“Stone age. Dinosaurs.”

Dina laughed harder, and her nose and eyes crinkled up in delight. Ellie felt herself relax a little bit more. “You sure you’re not thinking of the Flintstones?”

Ellie feigned serious consideration. “Now I’m not really sure.”

“Flintstones had a theme song. Wore a lot of leopard print.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down as much as you’d think,” Ellie joked.

Dina just laughed and shook her head.

\--

Later, at a rest area, Ellie stretched by the truck and waited for Dina to make her way back. Standing and stretching and breathing fresh air was helping her headache, and she’d guzzled what felt like a gallon of water at the bubbler, too.

She turned to lean against the roof of the truck and noticed Dina standing between her and the restrooms, staring off into the distance. It was cooler up north, and Dina was wearing a thin zip-up sweatshirt under a jean jacket, the hood bunched around her neck like a scarf. The gentle breeze toyed with hair that had come loose from her bun, and if it wasn’t for the loud _whoosh_ of cars flying past on the highway right nearby, it would’ve looked just like a movie set.

After a long moment, Dina switched her hands from jacket pockets to jeans pockets and turned back toward Ellie and the truck. She caught Ellie looking and a bashful, crooked smile broke out across her face.

When she got close enough to be heard, she called, “You looking at me?”

Ellie stood straighter and dropped her hand from the roof. She looked side to side and tossed her hands up. “Is there something else to look at?”

Dina rolled her eyes, then stepped up to Ellie instead of around to the passenger door. She stopped a few feet away and glanced out at the view again. “I was just thinking,” she said, then hesitated and bit her lip.

Ellie put on her best serious face, feeling strangely nervous. “Is, um,” she stuttered, “is everything okay?”

“Oh—yeah,” Dina said quickly, “yeah, I just… I can’t believe that a few days ago, I’d never even left New Mexico.”

Ellie blinked and shifted her mental gears. “Oh. Yeah, that is kind of hard to believe.” She tried to imagine living her whole life in little towns, in basically the same place, relatively speaking.

Dina looked aside and tucked her hair back behind her ear again. The breeze immediately teased it free. “Honestly, I’d kind of given up on stuff like this,” she said softly. “I was starting to think it was impossible just to leave Eugene’s. I already gave up on…”

She trailed off and gestured at the open plains.

“Waterfalls?” Ellie offered.

Dina blinked at her, then smiled. “Yeah. Waterfalls.”

\--

In the passenger seat, Dina had shucked her work boots and propped her feet up on the dashboard, her knees bent and her body curled in on itself. With her face aimed at the window, she said, “You know, I’m sorry you have a headache, but last night was really cool.”

Ellie spared her a nervous glance. “Was it?”

Dina glanced at her in return. She uncoiled a little, folding her feet under herself so she sat cross-legged.

“It was nice to see you kind of relax and, like, open up a little.”

Ellie bit her lip and looked away. “I feel like I already did that a lot, with you.”

“Maybe,” Dina allowed, “but last night felt more voluntary.”

“Do they pronounce ‘drunk’ that differently in New Mexico?”

“Ha, ha,” Dina said, clearly rolling her eyes, although Ellie didn’t look to see. “I guess… I usually feel like I’m prying. Which, I mean, I’ll admit I’m usually kind of okay with being that girl and just asking people shit I wanna know.”

“Accurate,” Ellie cut in, only half kidding.

“Thanks. But, so, it was kind of cool to feel like you were doing it on your own, I guess.” Dina turned away again, sounding almost shy as she added, “Like maybe you don’t totally mind being around me, either.”

Ellie looked at her in surprise. “I definitely, like, totally for sure don’t mind being around you, Dina.”

Dina met her eyes, and it looked like a veil had fallen, revealing the part of Dina that wasn’t so self-assured. “Yeah?”

Ellie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. In the bright midday sun, she was already losing her grasp on her ability to be this vulnerable.

As usual, Dina seemed to have an Ellie decoder ring, because she propped up a mischievous little smile and asked, “Even when I surprise you with vodka and Powerade?”

Ellie let her own smile surface. “Even then.”

Satisfied with Ellie’s responses, and her own confession, Dina settled back against the passenger door, head in her hand and eyes trained out the window.

Ellie swallowed and chanced the question she’d been almost asking all day. “Um, what exactly did we talk about, last night?”

Dina turned back to her and arched one eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember some,” Ellie replied defensively, “but there’s definitely a point where things get fuzzy.”

Dina’s lips peeled back into a slow grin. “Wow, you got drunker than I thought.”

Ellie chewed her lip. “Maybe I should just assume I said some embarrassing shit, and skip the details.”

“Not embarrassing,” Dina said. “We just hung out. You worry too much.”

“I’ll bet.” Ellie rubbed her thumb along the wheel, watching the ink ripple where it poked out of the end of her sleeve. “Did I, um, I mean did I mention…”

She glanced over, and Dina was looking at her curiously. She shrugged, feeling self-conscious.

“You told me about your first kiss,” Dina said, her voice gentle. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

Oh. Riley. That made sense.

“That was really it, though,” Dina rushed to add. “It’s not like I got you wasted so I could pump you for information. We just goofed around. And then you fell asleep when I was trying to make out with you.”

Ellie blinked and blurted a laugh. “I did?”

“You did,” Dina confirmed, crossing her arms. “I would’ve been offended under other circumstances. But then you started drooling all over the pillow.”

Ellie laughed. “Fucking did not.”

A sly grin played on Dina’s lips. “How would you know? You were literally unconscious.”

“I can tell you’re just saying that to get under my skin.”

“Oh? You can ‘tell’?”

“Yeah.” Ellie waved at her. “You get all smug about it. Dead giveaway.”

“The dead giveaway was the wet spot on your pillow this morning.”

“Gross.”

“It was.”

\--

They stopped to eat after they passed through Casper, winding west on a smaller highway.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Dina asked, as Ellie settled back in the driver’s seat with half a sandwich in her hand.

“Nah. Well… maybe. I’m good for now, though,” Ellie said, torn between giving herself a break and playing it safe since her name was on all the glovebox paperwork.

Dina shrugged and climbed in beside her. “Suit yourself.”

“How are we doing on the map?” Ellie stuffed a bite into her mouth and winced when she found it was mostly bread and almost no fillings.

“I think we’re getting close to our next turn,” Dina said, pulling the atlas off the dash and brushing crumbs off her own fingers. “In… Shoshoni.”

Ellie nodded, still chewing, and pulled back out onto the highway.

\--

She’d barely driven long enough to choke down her sandwich when they passed the first sign, one of the temporary digital ones on a trailer they’d set up for construction.

“Did you catch that?” Ellie said, craning her neck as it flew by. “It said Shoshoni, I thought.”

She glanced at Dina, who was frowning. “Yeah. Fuck. It said 20 was closed.” Dina sat forward in her seat and squinted at the horizon.

Ellie palmed the wheel. “Is that our turn?”

“It was. Guess it’s not now,” Dina said.

A mile marker whizzed past, then another.

“There’s a sign,” Dina said needlessly. They both watched as it got closer, then Dina read aloud: “20 closed at Shoshoni… Use alternate route. Fucking great. Got any suggestions?” she asked the sign with a frustrated sigh. “Too easy if they put the alternate route there for you to fucking take, huh?”

Ellie bit her lip and stayed quiet as Dina glared at the atlas.

“Guess we’re staying on this,” Dina finally said.

“Is that bad?”

Dina sighed, less angry. “Not really, I guess. It’s not like we’re on a timetable or anything. Just kind of sucks. We can just go west and come into the park from the south. It just looks a little farther. And the roads are more in the mountains.”

“The truck’s not that old,” Ellie offered, a little sarcastic. “I think it goes uphill.”

Dina rolled her eyes. “There might be snow in the mountains, dude.”

“Oh. Shit.” Ellie blinked. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, well”—Dina was smirking, she could hear it—“that’s why I’m in charge of truck maintenance.”

“I think I have four-wheel drive, though,” Ellie said. She glanced down at her lap, trying to watch the road and find the button at the same time.

“It’s fine. We can just go slow.”

As if on cue, a speed reduction sign crept up in front of them, and Ellie slowed down to what felt like a crawl as they entered the little town of Shoshoni.

Sure enough, the usual highway junction sign had an orange square plastered over the signage for route 20. Dina glowered at it as they passed, but they were both quiet as they rolled by.

“Aren’t we on 26?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah.”

Ellie shifted to stretch her shoulder. “That billboard said—”

“I saw it,” Dina grumbled. “26 to 287. That’s what I was gonna do.”

Ellie tried to sound cheerful. “At least that means it’s a real route we’re taking. And if they’re advertising Yellowstone, maybe the next gas stop will have some maps we can look at.”

Dina seemed resistant to being cheered, but the corner of her mouth tugged upward. “I guess. Pretty sure that was just some store that wants us to drive past them, though.”

“Take it easy,” Ellie teased. “Like you said, we got nothing but time.”

\--

Despite Dina’s grousing, the southern route didn’t feel overly long. The stopped at a gas station in Dubois, where Ellie picked up a cheap paper map and guide to the park.

“Going to Yellowstone, I’ll bet,” said the woman ringing it up, with a rehearsed pleasantness. “You ever been before?”

“No,” Ellie said. She was always hesitant with strangers, but this felt like as good an invitation to ask questions as she was likely to get. “Um, you got any tips on where to stay?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have reservations anywhere?”

“No.” She winced. “I guess that was silly.”

“Oh, no, dear,” the woman said, clearly lying for Ellie’s sake. “It’s still pretty early in the season, so there might be some hotels that have space, if you have a look online.”

Ellie sucked her teeth. “Any good, like, campgrounds? We, um, we’re looking to camp…”

The woman’s mouth twisted in thought. She pivoted and reached under the counter, pulling out some sheet or book to reference. “Well, the campsites in the park do tend to get booked up, but there are a few spots that are first come, first serve. There’s also a fair bit of camping down in Jackson, if you’re willing to drive a bit into the park every day.”

Ellie unfolded the paper brochure and located the scaled-out area map.

The woman’s finger thumped down heavily on one of the labeled dots. “There,” she said. “Jackson.”

Ellie scanned the thin artery of 26, the highway they were on, and frowned. “Wait, Grand Teton?”

The woman nodded and traced the road north from Jackson to the _Grand Teton National Park_ label. “Yes, dear. You go through Teton to get to the southern entrance to Yellowstone.”

When Ellie glanced up, the woman’s brow had creased with mild concern. “There’s a separate entrance fee. You didn’t know that?”

“Uh, no.” Ellie worried the corner of the brochure, and the thin paper immediately took on a permanent curl. She tried to smooth it against the counter.

She felt the woman looking at her closely. “You okay, dear? You looking for work?”

Ellie’s eyes snapped up. “Oh, uh, I’m not—”

“Bet somebody down there’s still looking for work-campers,” the woman continued. She pulled a heavy-duty plastic map from under the counter and placed it over the paper one.

“Work-campers?” Ellie repeated. She watched the woman run down some sort of index on the side of her map.

“Yeah, down in the RV parks, they give you a free spot in exchange for work. You know, checking in guests, or”—she flicked her eyes over Ellie in quick appraisal—“if you have some skill, sometimes doing maintenance and things.”

Ellie blinked in surprise. “I never heard of that,” she admitted, “but, um, that does sound interesting.”

“Now, I don’t know anyone by name who’s hiring,” the woman warned, “but you call around, ‘specially down near Jackson, where they have a couple private parks. You just might have some luck.”

Ellie eyed the index under the woman’s thumb, listing locations and phone numbers. “Um, you have, like, a list of them or anything?”

The woman pointed behind Ellie, at the rack of maps and tour guides. “You hand me that dark green one back there.”

She guided Ellie from one dark green brochure to another until Ellie struck gold.

“Yeah, that one. Bring it here. The maps are a lot better than this one you picked, anyway.”

The woman stowed the durable countertop map and expertly folded the paper one Ellie had chosen. She tossed it aside and rang up the thicker one. As Ellie fumbled to swap her ten for a twenty, the woman flipped the brochure over and went back two pages to a long list of advertised businesses.

“That should give you a few to go on—thank you, dear—and you can always check their website or try calling ahead.” She broke the twenty and handed Ellie her change and the brochure all in one smooth, practiced movement.

“Um, thank you,” Ellie managed, a little overwhelmed by the sea change. “Really. That was so helpful.”

The woman gave her a smile that seemed closer to genuine and less perfunctory. “You have a good time in the park. Even living here, you never really get tired of it. That kind of beauty is rare and special.”

“I bet. Thank you again.”

Outside, Dina was leaning against the hood, clearly agitated. At the sight of Ellie, she jumped up and cracked a nervous smile.

“I was just wondering if you were okay,” Dina said as Ellie got close.

Ellie held up the map. “I was buying a map, and that lady and I got to talking,” she started, trying to organize her thoughts. “She said maybe we can find work in Jackson so we can stay at a campground for free.”

Dina’s brows leapt up toward her hairline. “A campground? That would be fucking nice, huh?”

Ellie nodded. “Not have to sneak around in parking lots and wait for some cop to wake you up at 2 a.m. and ask you to move.”

“Would rather avoid cops,” Dina agreed.

“Plus, if we got a gig like that here, we could really, like, _see_ the park,” Ellie realized aloud. “She was saying there’s a couple campgrounds down to the south, in Jackson. Said maybe someone down there would hire me. Us.”

“And that’s close?” Dina said. As she said it, Ellie offered her the map, and Dina turned and spread it open across the hood.

Ellie found the larger-scale map insert and pointed to it. “It’s not on the park map, but it’s—”

“Here,” Dina said, pointing. “Jackson—wait. Jackson Hole?”

Ellie frowned and stepped into Dina’s space to look closer. She pointed. “Just Jackson.”

“Weird there are two. That’s the one she said?”

“Yeah, this is where she pointed on that other map.”

Dina looked up at the sky. Clouds had gathered over them as the day had worn on, so the sun’s position wasn’t obvious. “What do you think? Should we go there first, see if we can get ourselves set up with a spot before we go into the park?”

Ellie blew a loud breath out her nose. “I dunno. I wanted to at least see the park a little today, but I feel like we’ll have better luck asking about a job if we show up during the day.”

“Sold.” Dina folded up the map in careful accordioned segments. “The park isn’t going anywhere. Let’s find someplace to lay our heads.”

\--

They tried several campgrounds as they picked their way south, with no luck at any of them. One was simply gated shut with a hand-painted _CLOSED TIL SUMMER_ sign across it.

“I guess I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy,” Ellie groused as they drove back toward downtown Jackson, still packed with late-season skiers. “Was that the last one?”

“Well, there is one more a little farther south,” Dina said. “We could try it.”

“What the hell. Might as well try.” Ellie shrugged and got back on the southbound highway.

Jackson disappeared behind them, and they returned to the bare, patchwork farms and brutal, snow-capped mountains they’d been driving in since Dubois.

“Kinda sucks,” Dina said after a while, “to get your hopes up out of nowhere and then have it be for nothing.”

Ellie snorted. “Yeah. Kinda par for the course, though.”

“Fucking right?” Dina laughed. “But it is kinda nice to at least have someone to complain about it with.”

Ellie flashed a smile. “Yeah, it is.”

\--

“Snake River,” Dina said suddenly, jabbing a finger at a yellow billboard. “That’s the place.”

Ellie jolted the wheel just enough to make the truck jerk slightly. They both cursed.

“It’s coming up on the right,” Dina said urgently, still pointing.

Ellie obeyed and steered off the highway and into the deep mud of the parking lot. She parked in front of a sturdy but tired log-framed office building, standing guard in front of several orderly rows of identical cabins.

Ellie cut the engine and they shared a wary look. Dina screwed on an optimistic, cheerful smile and hopped out of the cab. Ellie tried her best to smile as well as she followed her into the office.

“Hi there,” Dina announced as soon as she laid eyes on the clerk. As Ellie stepped fully into the room and past the jutting angle of a merchandise shelf, she spotted a cranky-looking older man and felt her stomach sink.

The man grunted as Dina approached the counter, but it seemed those years with Eugene had made Dina impervious to old-man grumpiness. She folded her arms on the countertop and gave him her most dazzling, disarming smile as Ellie came up beside her.

“What’cha want?” the man said, sitting up straighter on his stool.

“Wondering if you’re looking for any work-campers for the season,” Dina said with so much confidence Ellie almost believed they hadn’t both heard the word for the first time that day.

He raised an eyebrow and looked Dina over. “Don’t need nobody just to work the counter,” he said. “Counter is easy. Ain’t even worth the campsite.”

“We’re offering to do real work,” Dina said, apparently taking a gamble on the man’s implied prejudices. “Whatever needs doing. I’m a licensed mechanic.” She nodded at Ellie. “She’s worked in construction. That’s got to be useful around a place like this.”

An expression flickered just momentarily across his face—one that might have been _impressed_. He stroked his beard in a way that reminded Ellie of Joel. “What brings such marketable skills to my humble campground?” he asked mildly.

Ellie started to say it was none of his business, but Dina spoke over her before the words were even voiced. “Wanted to come see the park, and it’d be nice to be able to stay for the summer. But you can’t stay anywhere without a job.”

He grunted. “Ain’t that the truth.” He scratched his beard again, then swiveled to a touchscreen monitor and tapped at it, out of view. “What kinda camper you got?”

“Just a truck,” Dina said. “But we can stay in that, if we have to.”

“Not for a whole summer,” he said with a snort. “I can put you in a cabin up front. That way you’ll be right there if folks need propane. Y’all worked a campground before?”

“First time,” Dina said, “but you won’t have to teach us anything twice. How’s the gig work? What are the hours?”

He tapped the screen some more as he spoke. “Cabin’s worth forty hours of work. You can split it if you want, or one of you can eat bon-bons while the other one gives me the forty. You won’t be on the books, since the main payment is in-kind, by giving you board. But I pay five bucks an hour under the table as a gesture of goodwill.”

He said the last bit sarcastically, and Ellie found herself smiling a little at the joke. At least he was upfront about it.

Dina turned to Ellie, as if to check. Ellie cleared her throat. “I think that works for us,” she said, turning her voice upward just enough to give Dina an out if she disagreed.

Dina nodded and turned back to the man. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Great.” The man cracked a smile for the first time. “I’m Bill. Welcome aboard.”


	14. Part II: Summer of Love

THREE MONTHS LATER

Ellie felt her foot slip a little again, so she used her heel to scuff some of the loose dust off the skin of the rock and carefully pressed the sole of her shoe flat against the surface. The rock dug into her butt cheek to the point of hitting pelvic bone, but the ledge was hard enough to climb up the first time that she didn’t want to risk resituating herself.

“Never gets old,” Dina said softly from beside her.

As usual, Dina seemed to have no trouble keeping her place, perched on the hard slope above the trail. Her eyes and whole attention aimed out at the canyon and the great falls at its edge.

It was a good day for it, the sky clear and blue, the sun highlighting the deep green of the trees, the froth of the waterfall so white it almost hurt to look at. They had only recently found this little nook, created unintentionally by the slow erosion above the trail, preserved by the tangled roots of a tree perhaps as ancient as the canyon itself. It raised high enough off the flattened trail that most passersby didn’t notice them at all, and the segment of the trail was narrow enough that few people loitered there between them and the view.

“Don’t you think?” Dina prompted, when Ellie didn’t answer.

After so much time, Dina seemed accustomed to Ellie’s ponderous silences, her hesitations and fears. In fact, instead of tiring of them, Dina almost relaxed into them, the way you might sink into an armchair after a long day on your feet.

Ellie swallowed. “Never does,” she agreed, looking more at Dina than the waterfall.

Dina considered her for another moment, then cracked that crooked smile and stuffed her empty wrapper into the side pocket of her backpack. “You wanna head back soon?”

For her part, Ellie was more accustomed to Dina as well, and she could sense beneath the casual question that Dina was not really ready to leave yet.

“Maybe in a bit,” Ellie offered. She felt the grip give out under her shoe and she shoved the heel out to stop herself from sliding.

Dina’s smile widened into a grin. “You okay over there?”

“Fine.” Ellie wrapped one hand around a thick tree root, trying to do so without calling attention to the motion.

“If you say so,” Dina said. Her dark eyes glittered. “But if you fall on your ass, I’m gonna laugh at you.”

Ellie huffed. Rather than invite that possibility, Ellie relinquished her hold on the tree, shifted her weight, and let gravity tow her slowly down the slope until she landed unceremoniously on the trail below. A girl walking past flinched away and snapped, “Watch it,” even though she was a good five feet away.

Ellie straightened and stepped out of the way, up against the fence, and brushed the dust off the seat of her pants. She demurred as another couple walked past her, then aimed her eyes up at Dina, still clinging to the slope like a flower on a vine.

Dina was still looking at her in amusement. From below, Ellie could better appreciate the play of sunlight on her hair and shoulders; the way her shirt wrinkled under the backpack straps and twisted at her waist, suggesting the shape of her body beneath; the tan skin poking out of the torn knees of her pants.

As if she had been waiting for Ellie’s full attention, Dina chose that moment to uncoil, rising to a crouch and sliding down like a surfer riding a wave. At the bottom, she skipped once to cross the path and caught the railing in both hands, short of breath and smiling, turning toward Ellie like petals reaching toward the sun.

Ellie felt a smile spread across her face in response, almost like Dina drew it out of her.

“You want to go back?” Dina asked again.

“We still have time,” Ellie said, although she didn’t really know that. She hadn’t looked at the time since they parked at the trailhead.

Dina scrunched up her nose. “I’m not sure we do,” she said, a little apologetic. “Your shift starts at four, right?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, and sighed. She felt in her pocket past the switchblade and pulled out the flip phone Bill had given them for work. She pressed a button on the side to light up the time display: 12:47. “Fuck.”

“Come on,” Dina said, trailing her fingers down Ellie’s arm, then clasping their hands together.

Ellie bit her lip, ducked her head, and let Dina lead her into the thin weekday crowd, their hands shielded by the glut of bustling tourists and the thick, dark trees.

\--

It was a long drive south, but a familiar one, now. They had made it a lot when they first got to Jackson, and now they made it most days Dina was off work. Really, they got up earlier on days off than workdays, leaving in time to see the sunrise in the park.

This morning, they’d returned to one of their favorite spots, Artist Point, to see the sun rise. Instead of tracking down some new corner of Yellowstone, they’d passed the whole day in the canyon area, laying eyes on all three falls, as if they were a good-luck talisman. The waterfalls were still Dina’s favorite part of the park, and Ellie never tired of watching her face light up when they came into view.

“What’s on your to-do list today?” Dina asked as they slowed down to pass through Jackson proper. As usual, Dina had kicked her work boots into the footwell and put her feet up on the dash.

“Bill said one of the RV sites shorted the pedestal,” Ellie said, trying to keep her voice neutral. She hated working on electrical issues, since she’d never really been properly certified. “Whatever that means. So, that, trash, traps, propane. Whatever else he throws at me before closing time.”

“Sorry,” Dina offered. Ellie shrugged and locked her elbows for a moment to stretch them. Dina waited a moment and then asked, “You want me to lend a hand?”

Ellie glanced at her. “With the pedestal?” she asked, considering.

Dina shrugged. “Yeah.”

Dina definitely had less trepidation, working on unfamiliar problems. Although she was making better money plying her real trade as a mechanic up in town, she’d admitted she missed the variety and challenge of work around the campground. _Aren’t cars pretty fucking varied?_ Ellie had asked, and Dina had laughed. She’d explained they were too familiar now, too easy; she liked puzzling out something totally new.

Ellie bit her lip. “I don’t think Bill would let us double-bill for something this simple.”

“How do you know it’s gonna be simple?” Dina said. “Plus,” she added conspiratorially, “Bill might not, but Frank’s a soft touch.”

“It’s your day off,” Ellie protested, although she felt her resistance failing. “You shouldn’t be doing any work today.”

“Then I’ll just sit on the picnic table and talk shit,” Dina said with an easy shrug. “I like hanging out with you. What am I gonna do otherwise?”

“Read,” Ellie answered immediately. She glanced at Dina and smiled; Dina smiled back, shy. Since they’d found a stream of income, Dina had become a favorite and frequent patron of both the bookstore and the library in Jackson, and she had read her way through several towering stacks of books stashed up in the cabin’s sleeping loft.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that tonight,” Dina dismissed.

Ellie shrugged. “If you feel that strongly about it, you’re more than welcome.”

Dina chuckled and bent to pull her boots back on. They crossed over the river and Ellie pulled into the lot.

\--

“Thanks for your help,” Ellie said for the hundredth time, her thanks sounding more like an apology.

Dina just shook her head. She crouched with one knee in the gravel, tightening the screws to crimp the new plastic outlet to the thick new wires. “It’s really not a big deal. I like this stuff.”

“Yeah, but I hate seeing you work so much on your day off.”

“Well, here.” Dina finished the last connection and held the outlet and screwdriver out to Ellie. “You take a turn.”

Ellie accepted the offering and took Dina’s place in front of the pedestal. She gripped the wires and fed them back into the opening, until the lip of the new outlet met the plastic housing of the pedestal. The wires were so stiff, she had to push against the outlet to hold it steady as she fed the long screws in.

“Plus…” Dina trailed off. Ellie glanced over her shoulder as she turned the screwdriver, and was surprised to see Dina looking her pointedly up and down. Dina ran her tongue over her teeth. “I like seeing you work,” she said, baring those teeth in a wide, hungry grin.

Ellie tightened the last screw and drew herself up, enjoying the warm confidence that always bloomed when Dina looked at her that way—the feeling of being wanted, which she was just now learning to trust.

Dina gave her that sneaky smile and glanced around them. It was the look that meant Dina would’ve kissed her, if they weren’t out in the open.

Ellie grinned and tucked the screwdriver into her back pocket.

“Well,” she said, “um, thanks again. You kind of saved my ass. I had no idea what to do.”

When she’d lifted the cover on the pedestal, she’d been shocked to find the 30 amp outlet was completely missing its third metal prong. She’d had to call Bill to find out the backstory: The pedestal had shorted badly, and the ground prong had fused to the guest’s power cord so strongly it pulled right out with the cord when they left. It had been Dina who looked thoughtfully at the outlet and suggested simply swapping it out for a spare from the shed.

Dina put her hands in her pockets. “You wanna thank me by giving me a ride home?”

Ellie grinned wider. She considered teasing Dina, since their cabin was barely a quarter mile walk away, but she chose to be merciful instead. She lifted her shoulders, turned toward the golf cart, and said, “Hop in.”

\--

Ellie grabbed a couple granola bars when she dropped off Dina, and she scarfed them down on the go while she rushed to finish the rest of her shift’s duties, checking animal traps on the grounds, picking up stray pieces of trash, and running up front just once to fill someone’s propane tank. When she’d finished her rounds, she drove the cart back up to the front just in time to see Frank flipping the sign on the door from _Open_ to _Closed_.

She came in as he was walking away. “Hey, Frank.”

He turned and gave her a tired smile. “Ellie. You wrapping up?”

“Yeah. Thanks for letting me work later today,” she said. She hovered near the front, where cracked windows let in some of the cooler night air. The office was still hot from baking in the sun all afternoon.

“No problem.” He smiled and tossed his long hair out of his face. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, as always, and he clicked a ballpoint pen absently in one hand. He gave her a knowing smile, the one he’d worn from the very first time he saw her and Dina in the same room. That first time, he’d followed it by touching Bill on the small of his back, the casual intimacy unmistakable.

Bill had been oblivious, all but shaking Frank off so he could show them something on the tablet screen.

“I know Dina was off today,” Frank added.

Frank loved to nudge up against the boundary of spoken and unspoken, to make it clear he knew the nature of their relationship, but Ellie couldn’t resent him for it. It was clear he and Bill were even less open than Ellie was with Dina, and she felt some sympathy for living permanently under that cloud.

Ellie rubbed her neck. “Yeah. Do you need me to do anything else? Before you call it a night?”

Frank shook his head. “Nah. You can consider yourself clocked out, too. Go on home.”

“Thanks,” Ellie said. “I’m still off tomorrow?”

“Yep.” Frank turned back to the counter and tapped the tablet. “Go on, now. Good night.”

“Good night.”

\--

The lights glowed in the cabin windows as Ellie approached. She let herself in and scanned the small space. As she’d expected, the light was on up in the loft, where Dina usually curled up to read.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called, setting her keyring, phone, and switchblade on the counter.

Dina crawled over and stuck her head out over the ladder. “Hey, Ellie.”

Dina clambered down and took Ellie’s face in both hands and kissed her. “What’s that I smell?”

Ellie frowned, more focused on drinking in Dina’s lovely face. “What?”

“Hmm.” Dina took a deep breath through her nose, looped her arms around Ellie’s shoulders, and smiled. “My girl bringing home the bacon.”

Ellie laughed. “Oh. Hardly.”

“Shh,” Dina said, shushing her before she could again point out that Dina made a lot more than her. Dina disentangled herself, retrieved a dish from the fridge, and put it in the microwave.

“Mm, my hero,” Ellie said with a happy sigh. Her stomach grumbled.

“How was the rest of your day?” Dina asked, moving back into Ellie’s orbit while the microwave ran. She touched Ellie’s hips; snuck her thumbs up to hook onto Ellie’s waistband.

“Not bad.” Ellie caught the scent of shampoo and took a deep breath of it. “You showered.”

The microwave beeped, and Dina turned to take the plate out and set it on the table. Ellie filled a cup with tap water and sat down at the place; Dina sat in the opposite chair.

“I had some time on my hands,” Dina answered.

The food, leftover fajitas from the night before, smelled too good to put off, so Ellie dug in. Dina watched her, thumbing the edge of the woven placemat in front of her. She felt Dina’s eyes on her, but Dina didn’t say anything until later, until Ellie had washed her plate and brushed her teeth and changed into pajamas.

“Let’s go to bed,” Dina said then, and Ellie smiled and followed her.

Dina curled up against her left side, tracing aimless patterns on Ellie’s stomach over her shirt. Ellie found herself thinking about tomorrow, and she asked, “You sure you don’t mind going to town with me tomorrow?”

Dina took a moment, probably to switch whatever she was thinking about, and then said, “Yeah, of course.”

“I hate making you do shit like this.” Ellie felt herself subconsciously teeing up the apologetic litany she always went into when she felt she was inconveniencing Dina.

“I really don’t care, Ellie,” Dina said. “It won’t even take me that long. And I like going to the library anyway. You can pay me back by waiting while I check out some more books.”

“I just don’t want to get pulled over for something stupid,” Ellie said, knowing she didn’t need to, unable to stop herself.

“I know, El.” Dina pressed her palm against Ellie, then skimmed it up, between her breasts, against her shoulder.

Ellie took a deep, measured breath, soothed under her touch. “Um. Anything else you wanna do tomorrow?”

“Nah.” Dina tapped Ellie’s collarbone. “Uh, actually maybe we can skip the park tomorrow, if you don’t mind?”

Ellie craned her neck to look at Dina in surprise. “You don’t want to go?”

“I do,” Dina started, then bit her lip. “Um, honestly I really want to sleep in. With you.”

Ellie relaxed. “Oh.”

“Well…” Dina smiled a little, embarrassed smile. “I also really want to finish my book tomorrow. Is that okay?”

Ellie blinked, then laughed. “Of course.”

Dina laughed, too. She leaned up to kiss Ellie, sweet and brief, then settled back against her shoulder. They lay in silence for a bit, in the darkness. Heavy curtains blocked almost all of the bright security lights outside, except for a bright line in a square around the edges. Dina trailed her hand along Ellie’s arm, leaving goosebumps in her wake and making Ellie shiver.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” Dina began, “to ask you.”

Ellie felt her brow crease in a frown. “Ask what?”

Dina stilled, and her hand came to rest on the inside of Ellie’s elbow. A bit below. Ellie felt herself freeze up.

“I can tell it’s painful for you,” Dina murmured, “so you don’t have to tell me. But… I’d like to know. The story.”

She stroked Ellie with her thumb, and Ellie knew she was touching the outer petals of the rose, delicate and open as Ellie’s soft heart.

“Is this for Riley?” Dina asked, her voice almost inaudible, as if she knew the power and danger of the name she invoked.

And despite the power, and the danger, the framing made it simpler for Ellie to answer, “Yes.” And even just that, just one word, was enough that Ellie felt a little pressure released from inside her.

There was quiet for another moment. Ellie imagined suspending herself by a rope above a large pool of water, unknowably deep. Since Boston, Ellie always held herself away from the memories, to keep them from swallowing her. Before therapy especially, it was easy for the memories to trap her, for them to feel more real than reality itself, and leave her panting and frightened, her skin tight and burning.

But with Dina, she had touched the surface of the water without drowning. Ellie imagined letting out more slack, and approaching that dark pool. Reaching out to touch it.

“Why a rose?” Dina finally asked. Her palm was warm and rough where it pressed the center of the tattoo.

Ellie swallowed and flexed her fingers, feeling her skin against Dina’s. “Um, I guess it felt right. She was… at the time, she was the most beautiful thing in my life,” Ellie confessed. She twisted her arm so that Dina’s palm covered the thorns, instead. “But… it came at a cost.”

Ellie braced herself just as the images came back: Riley in the mall arcade, laughing; Riley in the doorway, where they kissed; Riley in the bathroom, still and stiff and bloody.

“I always thought the rose suited you,” Dina said, her voice still low. She caressed Ellie, moving from elbow to wrist and back, drawing Ellie’s focus to her and away from the dark pool. “So beautiful, but so guarded.”

Ellie felt her throat clog. Dina thought—that? About her?

“You said she died?” Dina asked timidly.

Ellie took a deep breath, as if she really were going to dive. She squirmed her left hand out from under Dina, so she could curl it around her, feel her warmth and weight and solidity. “She left, and I guess she got involved in something while she was gone, because she came to see me and she seemed—different.”

Dina shifted a little, but Ellie kept her eyes trained on Dina’s hand, still following a steady path between elbow and wrist. Ellie took another deep breath, to try to squeeze it all out of herself. “She said she missed me, and she wanted to show me something, and—it was drugs.”

“Ellie,” Dina said softly, but Ellie couldn’t stop or she would never get the words out.

“I—I was scared,” Ellie stuttered, struggling to summarize the swirl of emotions she remembered from that blur of a night. “She—went in the bathroom, and I guess—I waited, and waited, and when I went to check on her, she was dead. There was something wrong with what she had. She—”

“Ellie,” Dina said again, raising herself so she could look Ellie in the face.

Ellie wet her lips. “She wanted to do it together. It was—tainted, or something. Laced with something. It should’ve been me. Us. Together.”

“Babe,” Dina murmured, “honey, no.”

Ellie freed her hand to wipe her eyes. She tried to wrench herself out of the memory, of that bathroom with Riley. “They closed the home down, after, and next thing I knew I was sleeping on Joel’s couch, and he was saying we should leave as soon as the trial was over…”

Dina moved, shifting her weight to her knees, hovering over her and cupping her face in her hands. “Ellie,” she said softly, pulling Ellie back to her as if waking her from sleep. “Ellie, I’m sorry.”

Ellie stilled, helpless under her hands as Dina wiped her eyes tenderly.

“I’m sorry I asked,” Dina said, her face contorted in a wince. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“No…” Ellie stared at her, at this person who still surprised her, so wild and gentle and loving. “I… I think it’s good, that you know.”

Dina searched her, her eyes flicking between Ellie’s. “You do?”

Ellie touched Dina’s wrists; her hands reached all the way around, fingertips meeting thumbs, encircling the strong, steady pulse of life. “I want you to know things about me,” Ellie said. “You make it feel safe. It feels good, to say it out loud.”

Dina didn’t move. Her knees bracketed Ellie’s hips, her body swaying with the effort of staying suspended above Ellie, holding her. Dina slowly straightened, and she let her hands drop to Ellie’s chest, to bear some of her weight.

“I can’t believe I’m here with you,” Dina said quietly. “Sometimes I feel so lucky, it doesn’t even feel real. Like I’ll wake up in my trailer at Eugene’s, and you were just a dream I had.”

Ellie watched as a headlight brightened the room for a moment. Dina’s face was drawn, serious and earnest.

“I’m not a dream,” Ellie said.

“You are,” Dina said. Her voice quivered. “You showed me waterfalls.”

Ellie smiled a little and settled her hand on Dina’s hip. “It didn’t turn out so bad, did it?”

Dina smiled a little in return.

“No,” she agreed. “Not so bad.”

\--

Ellie stared listlessly at the exterior of the building. It looked like the library had been redone, maybe twenty years ago, when everyone was following that kind of brutalist, Scandinavian look, all sharp angles and sans-serif lettering. It had lots of windows, but through them Ellie just saw stacks of books, and no hint of Dina.

She rolled down the manual window and sucked in fresh air from outside. It had only been five or ten minutes, but the cab didn’t take long to turn stifling, sitting in the warm summer sun.

Ellie’s gaze drifted back to the open glovebox, barren without the worn leather booklet Joel had given her to keep her paperwork in. Dina had taken it inside to renew the registration online. Ellie remembered brushing off Joel’s help to do it herself, now a whole year ago, just a few months before she’d taken off.

Had it really been so long?

Ellie shook her head, as if that could shake loose any lingering regrets, and turned back toward the building to scrutinize the eaves. She had spotted a security camera near the door, but she was parked farther up the road, near the corner, and it seemed their security concerns didn’t extend this far. So, tucking her sweaty hair behind her ear and pulling a ballcap over her eyes, she pushed the door open and stepped outside.

Without the aid of a metal hotbox, the day was mild and pleasant. Ellie circled the truck to post up against the passenger door, leaning comfortably in the half-shade of the truck, watching cars roll down the main road a few dozen yards away. Her thoughts turned toward the rest of the day, assuming Dina would be successful in her mission; Ellie had picked up a couple of plastic air vents she hoped to use to rig the back window so the truck bed got more air flow.

At first, Dina had asked why Ellie used her spare time to make modest upgrades to their truck camping setup—first reworking the framing and storage to utilize the space better; then raising the mattress onto a short platform, to stow the cooking gear and dry food goods; then adding a pull-strap to make it easier to close the tailgate from inside. Ellie had been loath to speak her fears aloud, but she managed to explain, _We won’t be here forever. We might need this again._

And Dina, who had weathered more than a few unexpected storms in her life, had nodded in recognition and understanding.

So, if Dina was going to spend her day reading, Ellie could put the daylight to good use, as well.

“Ellie,” came that familiar voice, from the direction of the library’s front doors.

Ellie turned toward Dina, a smile already on her face, when she registered Dina’s disconcerted frown. Dina had her tote bag of books under one arm, and Ellie again appreciated the rare sight of Dina in shorts.

“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked when Dina got closer. “Did it not let you—?”

“Not exactly.” Dina pulled the leather case out of the bag and handed it to Ellie. “I got in okay, but it said it was already renewed for another year. So I couldn’t pay or re-up it or anything.”

Ellie frowned. Who would have—

“Joel,” Ellie realized aloud. She sighed.

Dina tried and failed to fight a smile. “You think he paid it for you?”

Ellie took the case from Dina, and it felt like some tether across time and space, to hold this case that Joel had once bought to hold the paperwork for the first truck he’d been able to buy brand new. This was typical of Joel, to still worry and care after everything, when he didn’t even know she was alive, when he didn’t owe her anything at all.

In fact, she owed him. Probably more than he knew.

“I don’t know who else would’ve,” Ellie said, rubbing her thumb over the leather. She sighed again and opened the passenger door to nestle it back in the safety of the glovebox. “I didn’t even think of that. Sorry about the wild goose chase.”

Dina shrugged, and Ellie stepped aside with the door open so she could hop in, right when a loud old-fashioned ringtone surprised them.

Ellie dug the flip phone out of her pocket and answered, “What’s up, Bill?”

“Miller,” Bill said, the not-false-enough name Ellie had given when they were hired. She winced a little, as she always did.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Somebody’s here looking for you.”

Ellie locked eyes with Dina, who looked at her curiously. “Who is it?”

“Fuck if I know,” Bill grunted. “Says he’s been looking for you. Can y—”

Ellie hung up and looked at Dina, wide-eyed.

Dina hesitated. “What is it?”

Ellie shook her head.

“We have to leave.”


	15. The Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to everyone leaving comments and kudos <3 we are moving at a steadier clip now, so buckle up

Ellie wanted to leave right from the library, and deal with the details later.

Dina didn’t agree. She convinced Ellie to drive them back and park away from the campground, right after they crossed the bridge, so Dina could sneak in on foot and grab some of their things. Ellie waited anxiously, her thumbs a steady staccato on the steering wheel, her eyes on the dirt driveway Dina had jogged down to reach the campground from the side.

It had to be David, right? Who else would be looking for her, hard enough to find her here, at this little end of the Earth?

Some tiny voice inside her, one Dina had gentled and nourished and coaxed out of silence, whispered that it could be Joel. That if anyone loved her that much, to cross the wide heart of the country, to move mountains and drain oceans, it would have to be him.

But she knew better. Even if Joel had looked for her after she’d left, it had been a long time—nearly a year now, since she let the truck coast back out of his driveway in neutral, since she swallowed fear like a big round sleeping pill and took off toward the horizon. And she couldn’t see a way for him to track her down out here.

Only anger, only vengeance could drive someone this far, keep her in their sights this long.

It was David standing in that office, she knew. She could still see him in her mind, though years had passed. His sharp widow’s peak; his long face; his gaunt cheeks, and hungry eyes. She wondered if his hair had gone gray yet.

Joel’s had.

Up the road, Dina popped out of the brush, her backpack slung over her shoulder and the duffle hanging from her free hand. Ellie felt relief wash over her, dousing for a moment the anxiety that crackled inside her.

Dina shuffled between a walk and a jog until she reached the truck. Ellie opened the door for her, leaning awkwardly across the console, and Dina tossed the bags in before climbing in herself.

“Alright,” Dina said, adjusting the bags, “I got everything we need, I think. I left Bill’s phone on the counter.”

“Okay.” Ellie put the truck in gear and pulled back onto the road.

Dina twisted to put her seatbelt on. “Ellie,” she said as Ellie tore past the campground, “are you sure you don’t want to—”

“What?”

Dina gripped the car door as a pothole rocked them hard. “Make sure,” Dina said.

“It’s him, Dina,” Ellie said. “I know it.”

When Dina didn’t answer, Ellie shot her a glance. Dina looked uncertain—a look she rarely had, and one Ellie hated to see.

Ellie softened and pushed, “Nobody else would go to all this trouble.”

Dina met her eyes, and studied her for a moment, Ellie glancing between her and the road ahead as she sped toward Hoback Junction.

Finally, Dina just said, “Alright.”

\--

This time, Ellie didn’t stop until they needed gas, turning westward whenever she was given the choice until they caught their breath at a small gas station outside Twin Falls.

Dina hadn’t said much of anything so far. She returned from her pit stop with a plastic shopping bag that she peeled open to reveal road-trip sustenance: Pop Tarts, Slim Jims, hot Cheetos, Powerade.

Ellie bit her lip hard, replacing the bitter taste of guilt with iron. She put the nozzle back and went wordlessly inside.

When she got back to the truck, Dina was munching on a Pop Tart, her discontent plain even with her face pointed toward the window. Ellie climbed in beside her, slammed the door shut, and freed the other Pop Tart from the foil bag.

“Thanks for getting food,” Ellie offered eventually, when hers was half eaten.

“No problem.”

Ellie scratched her arm, her neck, her hand; crammed the rest of her Pop Tart into her mouth; then started the truck and pulled back onto the highway.

\--

It wasn’t long before the sun was blinding Ellie, setting in front of her as they sped northwest, following the lazy curve of the interstate through forests and across barren plains. She put the sun visor down, squinting against it, and then felt the plastic corner of a pair of sunglasses poking her in the arm at the end of Dina’s outstretched hand.

She took them and put them on, glancing at Dina. Dina’s expression was still drawn, serious, and Ellie felt any thanks die in her throat.

\--

Around 11 p.m., Dina fished a sweater out of the duffle and bunched it up between her head and the window so she could sleep. Ellie still felt wired—driven by fight-or-flight instincts; nervous about Dina’s silence; burning with the feeling, the fear, that something was going to happen—so she kept driving, passing the occasional rest stop or gas station, watching the last traces of sunlight fade from the blackening sky.

Gradually, weariness and exhaustion began to prick the corners of her eyes. She made an impulsive directional choice in a small town in Oregon, trying to bypass the border checkpoint, and by the time she admitted to herself that she needed rest, the road was creeping upward, leading her into the mountains.

Around 1 a.m., deep in a forested mountain pass, Ellie spotted a trailhead and pulled into the empty parking lot. The gentle backward rock of the truck as she stopped shook Dina from her slumber, and she blinked in bleary confusion at the trees surrounding them, at the darkness so complete that the clock on the dashboard was painful to look at.

“Where are we?” Dina croaked, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Washington,” Ellie said, twisting to crack her sore lower back. “Um, want to go get some sleep in the back?”

Dina sighed and nodded.

\--

Ellie awoke to the loud noise of the latch opening and the tailgate falling flat. Sunlight streamed in like water through an opened valve, fluid and full-force. Ellie winced and squinted through her fingers at the shape of Dina climbing out.

Dina kindly pushed the tailgate shut behind herself, but Ellie gathered herself, scrubbed her face with her hands, and sat up to face the day.

The fear felt less strong today, less compulsive; she had driven almost as far as she physically could, from where they’d started, and since even she hadn’t known where she was headed at first, it would take some time for David to figure out where they were. It felt good to assert a bit of control over her life again; to decide not to stay, to decide the risk of running was preferable.

She wasn’t sure if Dina had packed her toothbrush in the bags in the cab or not, so Ellie just ran a bit of water onto her finger and rubbed it across her teeth to clear the fuzzy taste of sleep. She pulled on a fresh t-shirt from the dresser drawer and thanked herself for stashing some emergency supplies back here, just in case.

Outside, she spotted Dina a dozen yards away, hands on her hips as she faced the trailhead signage. The lot was still empty, and Ellie realized it was a weekday still. It felt like they’d left Jackson a week ago, instead of a day.

Ellie took a step toward Dina, then stopped. Dina turned at the sound of Ellie’s shoes against the dirt.

“Uh, morning,” Ellie offered, still wincing under the assault of bright sunlight.

“Hey.” Dina marched past her to the truck. Ellie watched in detached bemusement as Dina opened the driver door and leaned in, her belly stretched against the seat and her feet kicking a little off the ground as she reached. Dina retreated with her beloved atlas in tow; she folded it open against the edge of the seat, the door still hanging open.

The cool, earthy press of trees around them felt strangely soothing. Ellie could smell dew in the air, that humid softness. She rubbed her arms against the chill.

“Looks like we’re here,” Dina was saying, pointing at the map.

Ellie stepped closer and looked where she was pointing: a little hook in the highway labeled Snoqualmie Pass.

Dina’s eyes cut to her, and Ellie bit the inside of her cheek as Dina said, “So, you want to tell me where the fuck we’re going?”

Ellie ran a nervous hand through her hair and realized it was a mess. She pulled the elastic band out and started retying it to busy herself.

“Looks like we’re going to Seattle,” Ellie said, nodding at the atlas.

Dina’s lips twisted. She shifted the atlas so it sat on the seat, then crossed her arms.

“What?” Ellie finally sighed.

Dina shook her head. “I get that you’re scared, but like, what’s the plan here, El? Is Seattle far enough?”

Ellie threw her hands up. “I don’t fucking know, Dina. I thought we were plenty far and then he fucking showed up.”

“So you’re gonna let him chase us all over the fucking world?” Dina was squinting a little, like she was more pained than angry.

Ellie couldn’t handle that and her own pain, besides. “If you don’t want to come with me, you don’t have to,” Ellie said, ripping the words out like they were burrs embedded in her skin.

“That’s not what I said,” Dina said. “You don’t get to throw that at me whenever you’re upset.”

Ellie recoiled and folded her arms around her stomach, overtaken by the instinct to protect the softest parts of herself.

“I’m not trying to leave you,” Dina continued. “I’m trying to help you. Come on, babe. Trust me a little.”

Ellie bit her cheek again, hard. She rubbed her hand against her upper arm and felt goosebumps. “Fine,” she burst out, a bubble bursting on the surface of the water. “Sorry. I just—what do you want me to say?”

“I just want us to find a way to finish it,” Dina said. Her voice was gentler now, softer. She stepped into Ellie and touched her wrists, unfolding her arms, inserting herself like they were getting ready to slow dance.

“Like what?” Ellie said, skeptical despite the force of Dina’s tenderness, despite the way she blunted Ellie’s edges like the wind carving sand into smooth slopes.

Dina didn’t speak for a moment, focused on arranging Ellie’s hands around her waist, and her own arms around Ellie’s neck. All they needed was music to sway to, now. “What if we let him find us, but somewhere with witnesses, with lots of people?”

Ellie felt her mouth still tilted in skepticism. “And then what?”

Dina shrugged. “Shouldn’t he be on some kind of parole? Couldn’t we get him busted for that or something?”

“Maybe…” Ellie’s knowledge of parole was a patchwork of anecdotes from juvie and quasi-facts from TV shows. But, it was true that a common thread was the general assumption that crossing state lines was frowned upon.

Dina shrugged. “Otherwise, we provoke him into a fight, and get him busted for that.”

“A fight?” Ellie felt the throb of fear speed up her heartbeat against the skin of her throat. She hadn’t been in a real fight since before Riley died—and that fight, she’d lost.

“Not, like, a full-on fight,” Dina explained. “Just get him to throw a punch. That’s why I said witnesses. See?”

The proposition still felt dangerous to Ellie, and although there’d been a time in her life when courting danger felt exciting and illicit, it now filled her with dread. But she did share Dina’s disappointment in seeing their little life so easily torn to shreds.

And, Dina had a point: Ellie couldn’t do this forever. Especially not dragging Dina along with her.

“Fine,” Ellie finally said. “ _If_ we were going to do that, what would you suggest?”

Dina looked at her thoughtfully, toying with the ends of Ellie’s short ponytail, and began to plan.


	16. The Confrontation

Ellie pondered the stoneware mug of coffee, the unmixed milk drifting across its skin like silt drifting up from the bottom of a puddle. She tried not to envision Dina, across the street in the bus station, tucked into the protective privacy shell surrounding an overpriced payphone. Tried not to imagine how she could begin to explain to Bill why they’d fled.

But of course, it was hard not to think about it, and wince.

It was a gamble, that David would even still be there nosing around, that Bill would even be able to tip him in their direction. Ellie didn’t have much other recourse to lure him to Seattle, since she’d cut up her credit cards that first night outside Austin, and Dina had folded and tossed the cell phone SIM card on their way up to Wyoming.

For a moment, Ellie felt herself sucked into her memory of that first night, like she’d stepped into deep mud that held her feet down. Stuffing her clothes into a duffle. Taking down Joel’s coffee can of emergency cash, with a queasy twinge of guilt. Turning back at the last second to trade her coat for his.

Later, in the parking lot, balling it up under her head and breathing the smell of _home_ the coat exhaled.

Earlier, years earlier, centuries earlier, when she’d walked in with the mail just in time to answer the phone, when she’d heard Tess’s telltale sigh on the other end of the line. When she’d known her bill had come due.

Dina plunked down in the chair across from her and Ellie startled so hard that liquid sloshed out onto the saucer. Dina hadn’t been that sneaky, but Ellie had been preoccupied.

“Easy,” Dina said, smiling that crooked smile, always balanced between gentle and teasing and loving and firm. “This mine?”

Ellie nodded at her, dropping her eyes to the mug of black water. “Who else would drink that shit?” she murmured, without her normal bite.

Dina cleared her throat and wrapped her hands around the coffee. “Well, Bill’s gonna take care of it,” she said.

Ellie looked up, wary. “He is?”

Dina nodded and took a careful sip. She smacked her lips. “Good coffee.”

“What’d you tell him?” Ellie said, even though she’d promised herself she’d skip the secondhand embarrassment.

Dina shrugged. “He and I have an understanding.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes. “You do?”

“Well. I pointed out that us leaving basically meant he got a week of free work out of you.” Dina’s poker face broke into a Cheshire-cat smile, sneaky and smug.

Ellie snorted. She felt relief trickle through her. “I guess you do have some practice dealing with grumpy old men.”

“He and Eugene would’ve gotten along,” Dina agreed. “Or—as much as either of those old assholes gets along with anybody.”

Ellie nodded. She felt the coolness of relief turn icy. “So he’s coming. David.”

“Bill said the guy left a number, so he would call and point him our way. He… I think he knew enough not to ask for more than I offered.”

“Bill’s not really the nosy type,” Ellie reasoned.

Dina took another sip of her coffee and let out a loud, contented sigh. “Damn good coffee here.”

Ellie chewed her lip. “So, it’s happening,” she said, her heartbeat loud in her ears.

“Looks that way. I said we’d be at the aquarium, like we said.”

Ellie felt Dina studying her, but Ellie’s eyes were rooted to her mug, to the milk dissipating and sublimating.

Dina’s hand came into view, placed casually on the tabletop, her fingertips drumming in a steady rhythm. “Finish your coffee,” Dina said. “Then we should do some exploring, before, you know, shit goes down.”

Ellie dragged her eyes up to that crooked smile. And smiled.

\--

“Right up here,” Dina said, “turn left. See all the people?”

“You been here before?” Ellie asked as she obeyed, turning onto an out-of-place brick-paved street bursting with pedestrians.

“No, I just mean, it’s a tourist thing, yeah?”

Ellie grunted as they made halting progress down the hill and followed a turn. It seemed they had somehow driven all but into the market, with carts and food stalls open to the air, long lines of people looping around awnings and doorways, and virtually no street markings or signage.

“You sure we’re supposed to be down here?” Ellie asked as patiently as she could manage.

Dina twisted in her seat to scrutinize their surroundings. “Maybe not… let’s go right here, and circle around.”

It took another excruciating ten minutes to locate street parking that could accommodate the length of the truck. When Ellie finally turned the car off, Dina was squinting at the map she’d sweet-talked off the coffee shop barista. “So, we just have to walk back a couple of blocks, but that was definitely Pike Place.”

Driving in the city was stressful so far—worse than Austin or Denver, by far—and Ellie knew she looked annoyed when she tried to offer Dina a tight smile. But when the climbed out of the truck, and Dina gave her a cautious smile, standing on the corner in the streaming sunlight, Ellie found it was easy to shed her bad mood.

Dina kept their eyes locked as she reached out and tentatively threaded their fingers together. Ellie fought not to look around; she forced herself to step in, to squeeze her hand against Dina’s, and step into the current of foot traffic.

\--

The market was even busier than its entryway, packed full of people and sounds and smells. The weather was beautiful outside, sunny and mild with a water-scented breeze, but inside it was muddied by the heat and perspiration of hundreds of people.

They strolled past tables of handmade hats and bags and belts. Ellie came to a stop at a stall selling paintings of Puget Sound printed on postcards; later, Dina lingered at a vendor hawking home-brewed seasoning mixes in little glass bottles. As they worked their way down, the stalls shifted from wares to fresh food, sprinkled with tiny food counters.

When they’d walked the whole length of the market, they backtracked to a food counter selling salmon sandwiches, and Dina took the wax paper packets and led Ellie down and around and up a set of stairs to an outdoor patio they had only seen from a distance.

Dina sat down with a contented sigh, and Ellie excused herself to purchase a couple of drinks from the brewery that shared the patio. Ellie came back and set two glass Coke bottles on the table, and Dina looked at her in surprise and delight.

They ate quietly for a bit, watching the water dappled with sunlight; the houses on the distant shore; a ferry meandering in toward them. Cars thrummed down the highway below.

“The aquarium’s over there,” Dina said, pointing at a Ferris wheel. “There’s a bunch of stuff down there on the wharf. I figured we could check it out later, or tomorrow, maybe.”

“Might be good to scope it out today,” Ellie said. So far, she had done a decent job not thinking about _tomorrow_ , but talking about it made her more aware of the fear and unease still weighing her down.

“Sure.” Dina lifted her shoulders in an easy shrug, set her sandwich down, and licked sauce off her fingertips.

Ellie decided to try on optimism for a change. “Maybe, um, after tomorrow, we can come back and buy that honey you wanted,” she offered, referring to a tiny shop selling artisanal flavored honey, where Dina had taste-tested over a dozen flavors.

Dina raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Ellie smiled a little, hesitantly, and Dina returned it. But quickly, almost uncontrollably, Ellie’s gaze shifted back over to the Ferris wheel, and the aquarium beyond.

\--

After their quasi-brunch, they went back to exploring the market. They found a lower level to the wharf, hiding an odds-and-ends store and a nerd haven so full of comic books and board games that Ellie wasn’t even able to act cool about it. A back door brought them to a dark alley where the walls were covered in old globs of gum, with tourists posing for photos and adding their own petrified saliva to the collection.

One of the tourists offered cheerful directions to Dina to get them down to the wharf. They descended set after set of hollow metal stairs, sinking from the polished veneer of the market down into streets that felt like oversized parking garages, all naked girders and raw, rough concrete.

They jaywalked across quiet streets and back into the sunlight, out from the shadow of the buildings. They waited at a light and spotted the tourist throng they’d escaped, concentrated farther up, in front of—

“The aquarium,” Dina breathed.

In sunlight, it was a pretty building, painted a deep navy blue that gave the old-fashioned building a timeless look. A plaza filled the space between them with small decorative fountains, and people clumped together in family groups scattered across the space, young children running freely in the open space between.

Ellie snapped out of her stupor when the stoplight changed, and she followed in Dina’s wake like a duckling. At the far side, close to the one decorative fountain currently not flowing, Dina brushed the backs of their hands together. “Should we go in?”

Ellie blinked hard and nodded. “Yeah.”

\--

The aquarium was pretty, all curves and rounded edges, in a dated style that was saved by the natural beauty of big glass windows and even bigger fish-tank walls.

The whole way through, Ellie felt a queasiness, a mix of awe at their surroundings and dread at the reason for their visit. They walked through a lit plexiglass archway surrounded by fish, and Ellie imagined David’s face appearing on the far side of the tank. They paused to marvel at a huge octopus, a pebbled leviathan the color of a pomegranate, and Ellie wondered if there really were ancient and powerful forces in the world, that had doomed her to a short, brutal life.

The path led them to a big domed underwater observatory, and Ellie pictured David appearing across the room, lunging for her with his hands toward her throat. Would survival instinct take over, draw her switchblade, slide it through the soft flesh of his neck? Would he want to kill her more than she really wanted to live?

She imagined the great dome suddenly cracking, and the weight of the water crushing her and David both, bearing them out into the great deep abyss of the ocean. Destiny, twice avoided, finding her at last.

She startled when Dina’s hand slid into hers again.

“You look like you’re freaking out,” Dina said softly, so others wouldn’t overhear.

“Maybe I’m freaking out,” Ellie admitted. The admission startled her almost as much as Dina’s touch had; perhaps she’d grown more than she gave herself credit for.

Dina brought her other hand over the other side of Ellie’s, capturing it in a warm cocoon. “I’ll be here with you,” Dina reminded her. “That’s why we picked a spot with tons of people.”

Ellie eyed the people around them with open suspicion. A thought occurred to her. “You think he’ll even be able to find us? Or, we’ll find him?”

“It’s not _that_ big a building,” Dina said with a shrug. She ran her hand up Ellie’s arm, to the elbow, and back down. “It’ll be fine. And then it’ll be over. You’ll see.”

\--

When they’d seen the whole aquarium, Dina insisted they ride the Ferris wheel. Ellie was quiet while they waited in the short line, and Dina left her alone, but once they were seated in the little glass bubble, and the door had been shut, and the wheel lurched into motion, Dina curled up against Ellie’s side.

As always, Dina’s touch soothed her, tamed the anxiety and dread warring inside her. Ellie let out an audible sigh as their car rose up, slowly, toward the sun.

“It’s really pretty here,” Dina said when they reached the top. The sun was lower in the sky now, cutting a sharp line of blinding light across the water. The distant shores seemed small, insignificant against the vast calm of the Sound; the seam of water and sky looked almost blurred, so that the world seemed bigger and more open than it had on the ground.

Ellie turned, away from the sun, away from the water and the sky and the view, and looked at Dina.

Sensing her attention, Dina peeled away from Ellie’s shoulder, just enough to look up at her. “What?”

Ellie opened her mouth, then hesitated and wet her lips. She clasped Dina’s hand.

“I just feel really lucky,” she said.

Dina smiled at her. Easy. Open.

“Me, too.”

\--

On the way back to the truck, Dina was lured in by the cozy, cluttered storefront of a smalltime bookstore. Inside, Ellie wandered aimlessly through the aisles, and she had just started to notice a pattern in the book titles when she heard Dina hiss her name.

Ellie found Dina in a corner by the back wall, brandishing a paperback book with a sly smile. “Sorority Secrets,” Ellie read.

“It’s you and me,” Dina teased quietly, pointing to the two women on the cover.

“Pft.” Ellie scowled to hide her blush. “Is not.”

“There’s a whole bunch like it,” Dina continued, putting it back on the shelf and ghosting her fingers across a row of book spines. “Maybe I need some new reading material.”

“Please don’t,” Ellie whined.

Dina shrugged in mock innocence, tugged another book off the shelf, and skimmed its back summary. “Maybe there are some new techniques in here we should check out.”

“Dina,” Ellie shushed.

Dina grinned at her, almost feral. “Prude.”

Ellie threw her hands up in exasperation. “Meet me at the front when you’re done.”

“Mm-hmm. Don’t hold your breath,” Dina mused, turning back to the shelf.

\--

It was starting to get late, and Dina was hesitant, but Ellie drove them toward the only other tourist sight she’d heard of: the Space Needle. Despite her efforts at optimism, Ellie couldn’t shake the feeling that this was her last day on Earth, and she wanted to pack it full to the brim, until it burst at the seams.

“You’re not scared of heights, are you?” Ellie asked with a worried frown when they were already in line, clutching a pair of tickets.

Dina gave her a pitying look. “We just rode a Ferris wheel, El,” she reminded her.

“Oh.” Ellie smiled, embarrassed. “Right.”

At the top, the pleasant warmth of the day didn’t feel as strong; the wind tugged at their clothes and hair like cloying fingers, so much that Dina gave up and redid her hair in a bun by the time they made their way halfway around the outside catwalk.

Most of the people who had ridden the elevator with them didn’t seem enamored with the wind, since they disappeared to the interior pretty quickly. When the area near them had cleared out, Dina produced the battered old Android from her jeans pocket and shooed Ellie into a selfie pose.

Ellie squinted against the light reflected on the screen and took several blind shots. Dina put the phone away without checking them and leaned her elbows on the railing.

“Pretty fucking cool adventure we went on,” Dina offered eventually, as they admired the glimmering spires of the city skyline.

Ellie swallowed. “Even if it ends tomorrow?”

Dina looked at her. “It won’t end tomorrow,” she said.

“How do you know that?” Ellie asked, her voice teetering between anger and fear. “You don’t know that.”

“I do. This isn’t the end of us,” Dina said, sure.

Ellie winced. “How do you know?”

Dina shook her head. “I can’t explain it… but I do. I know it. For sure.”

Ellie must have shown her skepticism on her face, because Dina unfolded slowly, like a bird spreading its wings, and then tucked herself around Ellie’s arm. Her face came close to Ellie’s, every freckle familiar, her cheeks pink from the chill, her eyes as dark and soft as a Hershey kiss planted in an oven-fresh cookie.

Ellie glanced around, spotted no one, and kissed her.

\--

_Shouts, then a heavy thud, and then silence. Ellie holds her breath so long that the line of light starts to swim. She lets it out and it sounds too loud._

_Footsteps, nearby. He’s going to find her. It’s only a matter of time. She knows he saw her run upstairs. The house isn’t that big._

_She presses the release on the switchblade, and the noise of it clicking open sounds way too loud. She grips the handle hard in her sweaty hand, and she tries to imagine pushing it into the man’s body._

_The closet door opens and Ellie lashes out like a coiled spring. The man knocks her hand aside and she tumbles out onto the carpet, barely avoiding landing on the blade herself, and then the man holds his hands up and says, “Whoa there, slow down, kiddo.”_

_She looks up and it isn’t the man from downstairs. This man has a full beard, a wider frame. He wears a silver shield. A cop._

_“My name is Joel,” he says. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”_

\--

The night passed too fast—a blur of desperate, naked closeness, and troubling dreams—and then it was morning, and they were drinking that good coffee under the pall of impending doom, and they were parking down by the wharf, and they were handing cash to the clerk and walking into the aquarium.

Ellie loitered in the second room, past the fish tank archway, and worried the switchblade handle in her pocket. She thought about that night so many years ago: David breaking in, Marlene yelling at him, Ellie getting a sinking, animal urge to flee and hide. Later, walking out with Joel, she got a full view of Marlene, and the mess David had left. She’d thrown up outside on the street.

Later, David had sat at a courtroom table and watched her calmly, coldly, as she recounted her story. He had only broken the façade once, after he was sentenced, when Ellie was there as part of the audience; he’d leaned in toward her as they led him out and spat, _You’ll pay. I found her and I’ll find you._

Ellie felt fear and regret clog her throat. Her eyes landed on Dina, standing across the room, watching the other doorway. She was overcome by a melancholy gratitude that, if things had to end today, she had gotten this cosmic gift first: these months with this beautiful girl she loved.

A hand grasped her shoulder. Ellie turned in such utter shock that she couldn’t even pull out her knife, couldn’t even open the blade, before her heart stopped.

“Joel?”


	17. Part III: Epilogue

THREE WEEKS LATER

Ellie shifted again in her seat and snuck a glance at Dina out of the corner of her eye. Dina sat on high alert, her nose all but pressed to the window in rapt attention at the drab Texas landscape, all dry grass and splotches of scrappy shrubs. It wasn’t clear what entranced her about the view, so similar to most of the roads they’d traveled together, but she had been watching it closely for a few hours, since they passed the Dallas turnoff up near Roscoe.

“100 miles,” Dina read off a sign.

Ellie took a deep, steadying breath and felt her heart slog heavier in her chest. “Yeah. Probably only a couple more hours.”

At that, Dina turned to her, their eyes locking across the cab. “Are you excited? Nervous?”

Ellie wet her lips. “Yes.”

Dina relaxed, almost reluctantly, against the worn seat. Her left hand went to the tear at the knee of her jeans to worry the loose threads.

“Are you nervous?” Ellie asked, the question almost a surprise to herself. Dina was so rarely nervous, it was hard to believe she’d correctly diagnosed the cause of her restlessness.

Dina scrunched up her nose. “Of course. I mean… of course.”

A stab of guilt coursed through Ellie as she realized she should’ve thought of it sooner. “He wouldn’t’ve offered if he didn’t mean it,” she offered. “And, it’s not like we’re gonna be, like, roommates. He said—”

“Yeah, I know,” Dina cut her off. She tugged at the loose thread, then knotted her fingers together in her lap. “It’s just gonna be weird. It’s been a long time.”

Ellie glanced at her as they cruised over a rocky seam in the road. “A long time since what?” she asked.

Dina raised an eyebrow. “Since I lived in a normal place? Since I called somewhere ‘home’?”

She left the last one unsaid, but Ellie sensed it, a bone-deep hope they shared, too fragile to risk stating aloud: _Since I had a family_.

\--

The scrubby foliage was gradually supplanted by the physical evidence of humanity: farms with crumbling outbuildings and rusted-out cars; sketchy resale stops and storage yards; warehouses turned homebrew churches. Once they reached those early roots of civilization, it wasn’t long until they were passing subdivisions with rows of matching houses, and sprawling complexes where outlet stores hung on for dear life.

For Ellie, things began to look familiar, and she told Dina to put the map away. These were neighborhoods she’d done some work in, in the early days when she lacked qualifications to do much beyond pull lumber and use a nail gun. She could almost trace her history in the city as they drove, following the projects she’d done with Joel as she’d picked up skills and qualifications and he’d taken her on more complex jobs closer to downtown.

“This is it?” Dina asked, almost breathless, as they coasted closer and closer to their destination.

Ellie took the exit onto 35 and nodded. She struggled to find her voice, and had to say the words twice to make them audible. “Almost. Almost there.”

The wheel seemed to turn itself under her hands, controlled thoughtlessly by years of muscle memory so easily unburied. They swung onto 290 and then she was taking the exit and thinking of it as _toward home_.

She’d almost forgotten what home felt like.

If she’d stopped, it would’ve overwhelmed her, but as it was, Joel’s house—their house—was so close to the end of the road, she was pulling into the driveway before the thought could make its way from her head to her hands.

And, bless him, Joel was already there, sitting on his porch with his guitar. He leapt to his feet and he was already beside the truck by the time Ellie climbed out.

“Fucking spry in your old age,” she managed.

In response, he wrapped her up in a bear hug, even tighter than the one he’d given her at the aquarium. “Good to have you home, kiddo.”

Almost as abruptly as he’d grabbed her, Joel released her and pulled the driver door further open so he could look inside. “You’d better get out here so I can hug ya, ‘cause if I gotta crawl in there to do it, you ain’t gonna like it.”

Dina’s face flickered with embarrassment and delight as she obeyed, climbing out of the cab and rounding the hood. Joel pulled her right into another hug, her dark bun barely poking up between his arms. “Thanks for talking some sense into my idiot kid,” he said. Ellie had missed that voice, warm and gruff, like if you used coffee to fuel whitewater rapids.

Joel pulled a pair of hardware store keys out of his pocket and nodded toward the garage. “Now, for my masterpiece.”

As he stepped over to the side door to unlock it, Ellie sidled over and clasped Dina’s hand in hers. Dina looked at her with the same expression Ellie remembered having, when she’d first seen this house, when she and Joel had first arrived from Boston: like it was too good to be true; like hope was bursting out of her seams; like hope felt scary, after so long without it.

Ellie felt a smile swim across her face. She squeezed Dina’s hand.

“Welcome home.”


End file.
